


The Taste of God's Blood

by get_ghosty



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Found Family, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Like louis lestat armand and marius show up some nearer towards the end but really its just my ocs, M/M, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recovery, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Renaissance Era, Sexual Abuse, Slow Romance, Stabbing, Vampire Bites, if you want actual fanfiction this is not the place, this is in the vc universe but the whole story is really just my original characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:35:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26348701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/get_ghosty/pseuds/get_ghosty
Summary: I can see the sun's licking tongue peering over the sweet lips of the horizon. My body can hardly move. Do I want to be asleep when it happens? Do I want that peaceful moment that so many speak of? Or do I want to stare down the very thing that will kill me in an instant? I don't know. My mother told me that when you died, you got to see all the colors under the sun. I hope that's true. I think I would quite like to see that.To my lover, I say goodbye, and I love you, for the final time. I will carry this love with me into death, I believe. To he, my fledgling, he who I call my son, though I know he could never truly be that for me, I say, I am so sorry that for you, I could not be more.And finally, to God, if you really are out there, I say, take me on, big guy.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

It has always been that man shall question God this: you, who is so good, how could you have allowed for evil to exist? To create the devil, your own adversary for the entirety of time, why?

I answer this question for you now, may that you never have to ask yourself this again.

God has not created evil. He created one thing, and one thing alone: Gray. SImply it is that the creatures which he fashioned took this gray and became tired of it, and they said to themselves, “let us test this gray, let us make it darker. How deep can the color become before it is black?”

And they tested it. They pushed it further, and further, until finally they came to black. God did not make this. God did not intend this.

But, it was his own mistake that caused it. By giving man the will of a god, man becomes the god of his own pathetic little world. Would that He had made us as simple as the leaning fawn, would that He had made us as dull as the gently moving snail, this evil would not exist, and it would not persist.

It is because of this why I believe that there is truly no heaven. Perhaps there is not even a hell. But, if there is some sort of place which I may go whence my soul has left this tired, disgusting body, then I will cling with a grip of iron to the crude rungs of the shaking ladder which has been fashioned by all the intruders of the afterlife.

God knows not about true evil. God knows not about the pestilence of trash which has begun to grow all its own. 

God, knows nothing about me. About the vampire, which so riddles the land which he hath formed, which so haunts the beauty, the shadow beneath the petal, and soft groaning of the pine. This, he does not know of.

For if he did, he would not love us enough to allow us to walk on for so long as we have. 

I do believe God knows, however, that there is an evil which walks the earth that is greater than anything fashioned by humanity.

This is us. This is I. If it is that we are evil, then so it is that God has empty holes where his eyes should be, and he did not make us in his image, and instead made of us what he wishes that he could be.

That is what I believe.

That is what I, for four hundred years have believed.

I do not know if this is something already known. I do not know if my ideas about goodness and religion are shared by any.

And, I do not care. I do not care because it is too late now to care.

I sit here, holding a pen and a notepad, stolen straight from the clutching hands of the corpse which I hath created, and I chronicle for you my life which I have wasted so terribly by simply continuing to live it.

Still, as I grasp the unyielding build of this pen, a lovely fountain tip making the scratching sound upon the parchment which I have always loved, and I can feel his hands, his dead, hard hands.

He is not far from me, in fact right through the door. But, I will not go in to see him. I don’t have any time, and, the dead man cannot look upon the regret of his killer.

I am outside, or almost outside, out on his balcony. Wide, and open, and yet covered with windows on every side except down. 

Probably because the man had an aversion to bugs. Funny, that the last blood-sucking insect he would encounter would waltz right in through his front door.

I am sitting, and writing, and in seven hours, the sun will come up over the city-lain horizon, past those large, monotonous buildings, and burn me to ash.

I do not know if I will finish before then. I will try.

My supernatural abilities are not many. I am not strong. Four centuries and I have not one of the powers which my peers possess. All that time has given me is whiter skin and blacker eyes. The latter, since the very beginning, has only been to anger me.

And, of course, it has never failed.

I have never been able to find myself morally good. I have always struggled with this, with feeling human, just as Lestat and Louis have. Just as so many which no doubt you do not know of.

The only difference, is that I will succeed in bringing my own death. Not like they did. 

There is nothing stopping me now.

Lord God, I am no better than a pathetic little ghoul. Perhaps in the next cruel trick from God, my soul will inhabit the rotting carcass of a dead stray dog.

Perhaps I’ll be doomed to wander the moors for eternity, wailing about a lost love or a lost child or something else which has been lost.

Or perhaps, just as I thought, none of this will happen, and nothing else will happen. Maybe there is nothing else, not after death.

I do not know which fate is worse.

There are only five people which have ever mattered in my life. Five, and five exactly. 

I tell you this because, as you know, time is one single spike, and everything builds atop of itself until finally it pokes you in the heart and you have no choice but to drop dead.

The first. My mother.

My largest regret is that I cannot remember the sound of my mother’s voice. If it is true that before you die, your most important memories flash before you, then I hope only that one of them brings to me that long-forgotten melody.

Yes, the sound cannot come to me. I weep even now, as I look down at these words.

I remember only that it was sweet, that it was caring, and that she was caring, and that I was a fool to not hold her closer to me when I was alive, when I was young and she was with me, in my home in Naples.

Yes, my Naples home.

So little can I recall about the maternal side of my parent pair.

I know only what directly affected me. One single scene, one single night.

I was a child then, a boy of only ten. We were poor, you understand. Or, rather, it was that we spent all of our money on the house which we lived in and the furniture which was scattered all throughout it. 

The rest of all that which people need to survive, we had scarcely a thing to provide.

I had been sitting around in silence, moving scarcely a single muscle, and looking out of the hall window into the tender night.

I did not understand very much at that age, as my parents taught me hardly a thing in the way of anything but practical skills, but I knew that it was late. Much too late.

I had began to get uneasy. My left leg was shaking, up and down, up and down, faster than anything, but no other part of me was moving.

I was containing all of this turmoil inside of my head, and save for that one, pesky little leg, I was perfectly still.

A habit I would take with me into immortality.

My father had gone out earlier that day, in about the middle of the afternoon, telling me and mother that he would be back before the sun fell over the line which it always fell over. The horizon, I mean. And, yet, it had been hours already since that very thing had happened.

FInally, I sighed, and I stood up, my eyes shut gently, barely flitting on the edge, only slightly managing to remain closed, and for a second, I simply stood.

Then, I opened my eyes, and began to walk towards the sitting room.

I knew that I would find my mother there. She was always there. 

My bare feet padded softly on the wooden floor, and I made my way to this room with the utmost of care in my movements; the way which I had been taught to move always.

Softly, slowly, with grace, and an even chin.

The open expanse of the room greeted me with its friendly build, and my eyes traveled to the sofa, where my mother’s soft, feminine form was gently sat, reading a book which I had seen her read a million times. I cannot recall the title.

“Mama,” I began, “where is father?”

My mother had light blonde hair. Soft, and golden, and a color so clean it was almost a crisp. It was loose, and long, and it cascaded over her shoulders, over top of her peeking breasts and her gentle shoulders.

Her eyes were the lightest blue, a color so light it could be compared to only the iciest sea.

She looked up at me then, with those very same eyes, and she said, “I do not know where father is.”

Her face was delicate, and when she looked off to the side and said, “he has been gone for long, though, I suppose,” she had such a look on her that I could not ever describe correctly. 

She must have been kind. I can hardly remember. She must have been.

“Where has he gone?” I asked, my poignant graces suddenly being evoked. 

It was not that my mother was not enough for me. I loved her. But, I was not close to her. We did not talk. And, the house was big. Too big for two people.

Children must be kept someplace cozy.

“Well, I don’t quite know that either,” she replied, and, after a short pause, a smike began to cross her face. 

A compassionate sort of smile, the smile a mother should give her child.

My mother was kind. She must have been.

“Why don’t you come and sit with me, Aley. You must be tired, from staying up so late. A growing boy ought not to be awake all hours of the night like this.”

I did not say a word, and instead simply smiled, just as she had done, and walked up, and sat beside her. I crossed my legs, one over the other, pressing the one on top tightly into the one beneath, just as my mother did and just as I had always been taught to do.

“What is your book about, mama?”

I had never once, after all the times I had seen her with it, asked about it.

She gathered this dreamy look in her eyes, and she looked at me, and she began, in a musical tone, “well, Aley, it’s about a man and a woman, and together they best the power of the devil, and together they love as man has never known love before.”

“Oh,” I said, looking away from her and cocking my head.

“But, how can they love like no man has known when a man wrote about them loving like that?”

She cocked her head and displayed mock thought, as though to take this into great and careful consideration.

“Why, that’s a good question, young one,” she smiled and looked back down to me by her side, and continued, “and I’ll tell you.”

“Simply, it is that those who write are capable of harnessing pure love as God intended it to be and spinning it into something that normal people like you and me can understand.”

I hummed, and thought on this. It made sense to me.

“Do the painters do this as well?”

Ah yes, the painters. They were fresh on my mind. The Renaissance was only about halfway through, you understand, for I was ten in 1570.

“The painters do this as well, only… Well, the painters do this in a different way. They harness God’s artistry and use it to empower their own, rather than his love.”

My mother always had a way of explaining things so that I could understand them. This was no exception.

When I was that young, I had this idea of God that my parents had presented to me. I thought him wonderful, perfect, immovable.

I suppose, many thought about him this way as well. I suppose they do so still, and have since the very concept of this God was created.

Frankly, I dislike to talk about God, though I do it so often.

“I love the painters, mama. Do you think I could be one, someday?” my voice was full of that sweet, childish innocence that I always found so amazing. I lost it a long time ago.

Perhaps the same time I lost the memory of my mother’s voice.

Her face lost that golden shimmer of happiness that it had gained when she spoke to me of God in art, and she said, “no, son. You’ll never be a painter.”

“Oh.”

I looked down towards the floor, my smile gone, and sighed a silent, yet heavy sigh.

“Don’t look so sad, Aley. Not everyone can do one thing. You’ll find your calling.”

This did not make me feel better, but it held me over. It did enough.

And suddenly, we heard the sound of the door.

“Papa?” I called out, making sure to keep my voice even. Not too loud, not in the house.

There came from him no response, if it was even him, but noises continued to resound. The closing of the door, the setting down of something or other, and footsteps.

Finally, a body emerged into the sitting room where I was seated beside mother.

Ah, my father after all.

Everything about my physical appearance I inherited from my father. Everything except for the femine build of my body, of my face, of everything about me.

The color of his hair was the same as the color of mine, a shade of light brown, the color of the shell of an almond, the very wavy trait which adorned my hair, the dark brown color of my eyes which I had always despised.

Only my build, jaw, and features which were femine were not like his, except, for my lips. My lips were the same color and shape as my mother’s, a succulent, tender mix of light red and pink. They were that way when I was ten, and continued to be that way always, and are still now.

Namely, I was ugly, by the standards of beauty the Renaissance held for men. 

He looked over to us and gave us a tired smile.

“Hello, papa.”

“Good evening, lovely family of mine.”

My mother smiled, then opened her book and began to read again, “what kept you so long?” she asked, her eyes flitting across the page in the simplest yet most gorgeous way I had ever seen.

“Ah, things got away from me,” he said, looking off to the side for just a bit, then back towards mother.

I was curious about this still, but I had been taught never to question a man older than me.

“Why don’t you come, and sit with us for a while?” my mother suggested, looking towards the open chair diagonal to where me and her were sitting.

“Don’t you think Aley should have been asleep a while since?” he asked, looking directly to me.

“I do agree, but he was just so excited to see his father tonight, wasn’t he?”

I smiled gently, looking towards the floor.

“Though, I suppose, you’re here now. Why don’t you follow him to bed?”

Well, I thought this to be a grand idea, though I knew that my father couldn’t be trusted to keep his answers for this sort of thing consistent.

“Hmmm, I suppose I will.”

I stood up, my smile growing, and without saying a word, I began to walk out of the room, down the hall, and finally came to the doorway which I knew to be my own.

I didn’t know what he intended to do. Was he just going to go once I entered the bedroom? Would he stay and speak to me? I didn’t dwell on this for very long. There was no need to.

My bed was never comfortable in that house. Often, I dreamed of the plush beds of kings, draped with silks and covered in pillows.

But, what I had was enough for me in my youth.

He pulled up a chair and sat next to my bed as I got beneath the small covering.

“I hope you didn’t wait for me too long.”

“Ah, mother, she…”

I couldn't think of the word I wanted to say. I didn’t even know the word that I wanted to say.

“Exaggerates?”

“Is that the word? I don’t know what that means.”

“I think it is.”

“...papa.”

“Yes?”

“Mama says I’ll never be a painter. Do you think I can do it? Do it like them?”

He leaned back in his chair, and he knitted his eyebrows together so hard I was almost afraid they wouldn’t be able to unstitch.

“No. No, I don’t think so, Aley.”

“Oh.” I looked away from him.

“Good night, son.”

“Good night, papa.”

I watched his back as he stood up, moved the small wooden chair back to where he found it, and left the room.

Perhaps he did sit with mama that night after all. Perhaps they looked into each other’s eyes, and fell in love all over again, if they were ever even in love. Perhaps they sang to each other, or mouthed little tidbits of honey to each other, or even went out on a walk together to look at the stars. 

I did not know. I knew nothing for sure about that night except for one thing: I would not be a painter.

Them, they could paint, but not me.

It would be best if I stuck to the things which I had been taught, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

I grew up.

When I was thirteen, my mother left.

I remember that scene so clearly as well. It was night, the same time of night that my father had come home in this last scene which I have described for you.

I was crying, and she stood hulking there in the entrance, not even having the decency to look into the eyes of her weeping son.

“But why mama, why must you leave?”

She did not answer me. I wanted only for her to turn around, to face me and to soothe me, to stroke her soft, smooth hands over my wavy hair, to caress my face and press her lips to my forehead like she always used to do.

If only she had done for me this one simple thing. Maybe I would have turned out differently. Maybe I would not even have become what I did.

What difference this one missed action could have been.

But she did none of these things. I felt as though I might weep so much that I would shrivel up and all of the water in me would be gone. I thought I might cry myself into such a death as no one else had known.

“Please, please stay.”

But I knew that she would not.

I thought that it was my fault, for the night before she had come to me and she had been crying just as I was crying then. 

She had come to me and she had held me to her and she had asked me one question, and one question alone, “why have you become this way?”

And I didn’t know how to answer her. I hadn’t known what I had done wrong in her eyes, and she hadn’t told me when I had asked her. I was scared that night, and I was a million times more fearful as she seemed to grow closer and closer to the closed doorway, though she took not even a step.

“Mother…”

And suddenly, I felt as though I had never known this woman who I had spent all of my life with. Suddenly, I felt as though this woman who was meant to love me unconditionally, unconditionally as no one else would, greater than anyone else would, didn’t want me. Didn’t love me. 

“I love you,” I said. I knew that she was going to leave. I knew that I would have no say in this, no sway over her. But, I thought, if she would just tell me that she loved me one final time, tell me that she loved me like she used to do, then I would be fine. Alright. That I could keep on.

“Aley. Your garden is beautiful.”

And that was all which she said to me. The last thing. And she was gone. And, my father wasn’t even here to see it.

He wouldn’t know that she was gone until almost two hours later, when he found me, sitting, in the same position that she always used to, in the place that she always used to occupy, and he asked me where she was.

And I told him.

“Did she not tell you why?”

I shook my head.

“How could she have not told you something like that? Are you sure you did not miss it?”

“She told me nothing.”

He was silent for just a moment. His eyes seemed to harden, and I never once saw them soften again.

“It was because of you, wasn’t it?”

I simply blinked.

He sighed. He was upset. 

Simply, he went to bed.

My father did not become more distant. In fact, he was as distant to me as he had always been. Only, without my mother to fill my days, to talk to, I felt the distance much more keenly.

So, I began to work more on my garden.

That was one of the few things which my parents had taught me how to do. Garden.

I grew a great many things. Some of which I did not even know the name for, which I had never seen in the whole of Italy which I had explored besides our own yard.

There was, at one point, so many different buds surrounding me that I almost felt as though I would pass out from the daze of perfume which surrounded me.

It was so thick one would almost have to force their finger through it.

I threw myself into this work with all of my being. For so long, I did nothing but garden. 

I hardly left the garden in fact. It was almost as though the scent of flowers had been permanently ingrained into my skin.

Most of my clothes had been stained with grass or dirt, save for one or two outfits which I kept in case I did have to go out.

I had no plan. I was not an educated man, I could hardly read. I did nothing but garden.

I kept on like this, silent and alone with nothing but the fruits which I culminated from the mother nature, until I was sixteen.

I had done that for an entire three years.

It was a lovely day, the sun shining so bright I feared it would kill my hard work, and melt my skin straight from my face, when my father came out into my garden for the first time.

He stayed in the open doorway for a long time, not walking out into the open to meet me.

“Father!” a wide grin spread across my face.

“Aley, I need you to go down to the docks today.”

“Oh,” I said, lost in thought. “Which docks?”

I had an idea, but Naples was right on the shoreline, and we were close to two. I hoped he would say the one that I was thinking that he would.

He looked away from me and towards the bush of purple buds that I was grooming.

He was silent for much too long to be simply hesitation.

“Ah,” I said. I knew what he meant.

“What do you need for me to do there?”

“I need for you to talk to a man named Vere.”

I didn’t like that my father was being so vague.

“Yes, yes, talk to him and tell him what?”

He hesitated. I could almost see a thin sheen of sweat over his face. Perhaps from the sun.

Or, perhaps, from something else.

“He’ll tell you.”

I nodded and looked away from him, forward to the same bush which he seemed so intent on looking at.

“And where will I find him? Should I ask the people there?” 

I was hoping that he would not tell me to do this. I was worried, frightened. Men in this time did not hit puberty so early as men now, you understand. I was sixteen, not a man yet. I wouldn’t be until I was twenty-three.

And, the docks of which he spoke were no place for a man of my age, let alone one like me with no muscles, a frail body. A curse that I was able to garden for so long and still gain no strength from it as so many other had done.

“I would not worry about it. He’ll find you.”

Ah, thank you papa. Very ominous. Definitely puts me at ease. Always had a way with words, that papa.

“Alright, father, I’ll do this for you. When do you need for me to be back?”

“Stay out as late as you want to, Aley, it makes no difference to me.”

My eyebrow cocked, and I turned to look at him.

“Ah. Okay then.”

I stood up, and he moved into the house. By the time I got to the door, I could not see him anywhere.

I wiped my hands on my pants, and walked up the stairs, to the hall that led to my room. 

I would have to get changed.

I had not much in the way of clothing, but I had enough. I wore a simple, thread-bare top, white and so thin as to be nearly translucent, and plain dark trousers. Anything was fine, I reasoned with myself, as long as it didn’t have the stains of the garden on it.

I walked down the stairs gently, careful not to make a sound, and to be smooth with my movements. As you know, as I had been taught to do.

I did not know exactly where my father was, so instead I simply called out for him as I was about to exit, “I’m on my way, papa. I’ll see you later.”

I didn’t know exactly how long this was going to take. I hadn’t gone to this dock before.

I had gone to the other one, the rich one with a million merchants from all over selling their knick knacks and trinkets.

My mother used to tell me that when you die, God shows you all the colors under the sun.

I believe that walking along that dock is the closest a man can get in life to seeing that.

But I was not going there. No, I was going to the other one. 

I had to hurry my pace much. It must have been only about two hours that it took me to get there finally. I knew that I was nearing it when the landscape began to dim, as though the light had been sucked from it like a butterfly sucking the liquid nectar from a flower, as though the buildings had been cursed with an endless charcoal rubbing cover.

When finally, I saw the hulking shape of a ship bobbing over the dock. So I was there.

As I got closer, more ships revealed themselves to me, which had been blocked from my view previously by various ramshackles buildings.

There was one which I noticed distinctly, for its lack of people aboard.

At least, there was no one out in the open. Perhaps they were in below.

I was walking slowly. I didn’t want to attract attention. I thought at least my clothes were dirty enough that none of these people would try to rob me.

There were men scattered all over. Most talking to each other, in varying levels of volume and speed. Some of them I could not understand, as they were not speaking my language.

I recognized a pair speaking something which I was sure was french, but, I didn’t know exactly. It’s just that french has a distinct sound that you did not get with italian or spanish.

Something strangely sweet about it, perhaps.

I was wandering around with no real aim, and cursing my father for asking this of me.

If he was going to send me out with a task, he really should tell me what the task actually was.

Finally, I decided to best my own better judgement, and ask someone.

I approached a man, simply because he was not talking to anyone, and asked him, praying that he spoke the same language as I, (you understand that in the 1500’s, Italy did not have a national language, and Italian as we know it now was not entirely adapted yet.) “pardon, sir, can you tell me where I might find a man by the name of Vere?”

I knew not of the man’s second name, and in fact I could barely remember his first name.

The man looked away from me and somewhere off to the side, and though he did not answer, he did move his head in the general direction of somewhere a bit beside me.

Then, I heard a voice.

“I am he.”

I whipped my head around to see the person who had spoken.

It was a man, as I had expected. He had dark brown hair, short, and styled like my own, only straight, instead of incredibly wavy.

“Oh! Hello.”

He smiled, and waved off the other man, who I had first addressed.

“You’re looking for me?”

“I am, though I don’t know why, exactly. My father sent me.”

His eyebrows raised in surprise, and then a strange sort of smirk spread across his face.

“Oh,” he said, “yes. Your father must be Giamen.”

I nodded.

He brought his arm up around my shoulder, and he said, “walk with me, will you?”

I was hesitant, at first, but I figured that I had no other choice, and he seemed nice enough.

How old was he? He looked like he must have been, what, twenty-six?

I was taught never to question men who were older than me.

“I hear from your father that you like to garden?”

This was enough for me to let my guard down. I hardly ever got to speak to someone, let alone about something that I enjoyed.

“You hear correctly,” I say, a smile forming on my face almost immediately.

“I grow all kinds of things. Not just flowers, you understand, though I do grow many of those.”

He nodded, his hand’s grip on my left shoulder tightening. I did not notice this, however.

“I tried dabbling into vegetables once, but the soil just isn’t right for it. I thought it was best to stick simply with flowers, bushes and ferns. One year, I did try a bit of herbs, though that did not last very long.”

This went on for a while. I spoke simply of gardening for so long, at one point I was almost sure I was just running circles over myself and repeating things again and again, though I wasn’t exactly sure.

I was so enthralled with this man, simply because he allowed for me to speak about the things which I had loved, and he did not try to stop me from speaking, that I forgot that I had come there to do something entirely.

Finally, when I had satisfied myself with this measure of nothing but rambling, I asked him a question.

“I’m sorry that I’ve been talking for so long. Tell me about you.”

I had expected for his smile to grow or for him to break into some sort of rant in the same way which I had, but instead, he simply scowled, and looked away from me.

We had been keeping an even pace for a while. I didn’t know exactly where we were going, or how long we had been going there.

“Nothing about me is important,” he said.

I looked to the side blankly.

“There must be something about you that’s important. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

He shrugged, and said, “what got you into gardening?” he asked.

This was, of course the right thing to say. I was so drawn into this friendly man, who had allowed me to talk about things I had never gotten to talk about. He was kind, I thought.

This continued for so long, I was sure that we had walked all the way through Naples by the time I finally said that I had to go home.

“It is getting late,” he said, looking down at me with some sort of disappointment.

“You must come back again tomorrow,” he said, glancing off to the side and then back to me.

“...come back tomorrow?”

“Yes,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, “there must be more you want to talk about. I enjoy your company.”

Ah, there it was.

I enjoy your company.

Such a simple phrase that it was, and yet, it swayed me so easily.

“Alright then” I said, smiling up at him, “tomorrow. Where shall I meet you?”

He seemed to think about this, putting his hand up to his chin, and then said, “come meet me beside my boat.”

My mouth opened in surprise.

“Your boat?”

He smiled, “Yes. I saw you looking at it, before.”

“Ah,” I began to nod, “the one with no men on the deck.”

“No men? There was one man, definitely.”

Really? I couldn’t recall seeing any man. Well, maybe he was right.

“I’ll be going then,” I said.

I began to walk off in what I was almost sure was the correct direction. I thought I recognized where we were, and the street that we were on.

As I was moving away, I felt a burning gaze upon my back, and I knew immediately that it was his.

A thought came to me, suddenly, almost as though of its own volition,  _ ‘I can’t wait to see him again.’ _

The stroll home was strange, and long. Much longer than it had been to get there in the first place.

I supposed it had been because I was not walking anywhere near as fast as I had been before.

I couldn’t help but look up at the sky. 

It was one of those nights where you couldn’t see a single star in the sky, and yet it felt as though there were a million, poking their eyes out to meet you.

I could smell smoke coming from somewhere around me, somewhere in the numerous disarray of buildings which had me surrounded, the walls becoming the flesh and I the christian disciple so carefully avoiding them.

I thought of Vere, then, as my shoes tapped against the dirt road, a soft, earthen sound which I had never enjoyed fully.

I thought of his voice, a voice which sounded so impossibly good to me, as though it could make me fall asleep with one single word, as though it could make me fall with one single word of praise.

Ah, yes. That was the narrative of my youth. That longing for praise, for love and adoration. My fatal flaw is that I allowed it to consume me for so long.

I feel as though even now, I have yet to shake it off.

Oh, that voice. I curse myself that I can remember his voice so distinctly and yet I cannot remember even my mother’s. My mother, who loved me so much she would have died for me.

I’d like to believe that, at least. Isn’t that what mothers are meant to do? 

HIs voice was a tangle of pulsating light, throbbing and vague and yet so full and beautiful. If it were a being, I would have wept at the sight of it, and yet still, I would have reached out my hand and attempted to grasp it, and bring it closer to me, to allow it to consume me and become one with it forever.

Yet, somewhere deep inside of me, somewhere in a place I knew I would never visit, something told me not to come back. 

But I knew that I would. You, my reader, know that I will.

I hadn’t noticed the drop in temperature until it began to creep into my fingernails, freeze beneath them, as though it were snowing in that small, personal space.

I chuckled at this. Strange how the weather manages to work its way into everything.

I became so tired, by the time that I reached my home again. I did not call out to my father, as I stepped back into the door, because I felt that he, as a sensible man, would be asleep by then.

No matter, I supposed, he would see me tomorrow, back out in the garden.

Perhaps, I had proposed to myself, I could search mother’s old chambers and see if I might find one or two of her books. 

I knew that I could not read, but perhaps, I might be able to learn. How hard could it be? I had learned how to speak, hadn’t I? Though I suppose that I did have help with that pursuit.

Even in this drowsy state, I did not clunk up the stairs. I must never make a sound when I move.

I stripped calmly, slowly and with care. I did not want to pull the light fabric roughly, for fear that even a single sudden movement would tear it in two.

My skin felt cold and supple against the harsh air of the room, and I ran my hand over my arm,a few times, slowly and yet applying a bit of pressure. 

I did this unconsciously, and with no real reason. Simply, it felt like the right thing for me to do.

The breath which I let out in an attempt to balance myself, was shaky. Yet, it was present, it was there, and simply that I could breathe and hear that sound was enough for me.

I grabbed quickly my clothes for bed, and dressed in them so quickly that I did allow myself to make a sound as I worked.

I wasted no time in getting into my hard bed.

I stared up at the ceiling above me which I could not see. It was enough to know simply that it was there. It did not matter if I could not lay eyes upon it in that moment.

I suppose that I felt this way about God as well, in those days. Is that not how every believer feels? Or do they think that they can see God looking down upon them if they focus enough on their prayers?

I will never know. I’ve never met one.

I was inconsistent in my prayers. I knew that I was meant to utter one or two before bed, but I could not remember what they were, or exactly why.

I tried to go to sleep. But, my mind was racing and singing and screaming all at the same time.

Only, I do not think that that was what was keeping me up. No, I was kept up only by a smile.

The night spoke to me as I closed my eyes, bowing gently into my ear and uttering only one phrase,  _ “come to him after dark.” _

My eyes opened in curiosity at that. The night did not whisper to me again, though, and still I could see nothing, and still I was tired, so I closed my eyes again and thought to myself that that was not something one would expect for the night to say to them.

The night brings love and poems or death and foreboding, not something so simple as a suggestion for the next day’s proceedings.

Or, perhaps it was not the night which had told me this, and simply my own head, disguising itself as the one thing which it knew that I would listen to. Certainly, I would not listen to my head.

I know that I had a dream that night, but I remember almost none of it. One can recall so little of their human life once turned immortal, as you well know.

The only part of it which I can remember, is that I was walking alone in some barren landscape. I did not feel tired or weary or hot, I was simply walking up, and I reached the peak of whatever it was I had been traveling up, and there came all of a sudden a rush to my head, as though I had been expecting to see something over on the horizon, something which had been just out of view, blocked by the impassible height.

And then, I looked out upon nothing but more of the barren waste I had walked over.

And the rush was gone, and I felt nothing again, and simply I began to walk, and again and again I passed these moving mountains, feeling that rush of expectation, that I might see the outline of a city, or that I might see the dazzling sparkle of the light of the moon upon water, or that I might see the curve of the palm and the bend of the animal’s neck, and I found nothing but landscape.

It might have been sand that I walked in. For what else could be so movable and yet so dry and alone?

But it did not feel to me to be sand. Perhaps something which could have vaguely resembled sand in the dark.

Ash?

A message came to me in this dream. This message was the hand which turned me away from religion. I believe that if it had not been for this, I might have believed in the Lord into my immortal life. Perhaps a century, or two.

Will God remember I, the lone statue beneath the endless night, alone in this vast empty?

And I knew that the answer was no.

I belong only with those who do not belong with God. 

I was so foolish. I believed myself to be the son of something so glorious, the son of a God and the son of Italy and the son of my era.

For centuries, men have said that any one age in human history cannot be erased completely, that while symbols of it may be destroyed, the memory of the art and the beauty which stemmed from it can never be wiped away.  
And I was the jester who peddled this idea for so long. Even in my immortality, I continued to believe this. I told myself this, kept it close to me like a charm which staved off the evil demon.

I know this now not to be true.

I have had no purpose in any plan, in any grand thing. I am no stone in a pyramid, no beam in the foundation, for there is no pyramid, there is no foundation. I am simply worthless, and there are few who can say that they are different than I.

I have never held any worth to anyone.

The next morning, I awoke, and my entire body felt groggy. Not heavy, you understand, simply tired.

My stomach was rumbling, and I groaned, realizing that I had not eaten at all the day before.

I awoke, and changed from my bedclothing into one of my working outfits. I was not going out into the garden immediately, as I so often did. First, I would find something to eat, and then I would do what I had decided to do the night before.

Though, before I could make my way to the pantry, I stopped moving, and looked simply ahead of me.

_ ‘No,’ _ I thought,  _ ‘better not.’ _

Ah well. I suppose not. I shook my head and moved away from my path, ignoring the desperate groaning of my stomach, weakening my body with every minute which it was not sated.

It did not matter that much anyway, I supposed, as long as I was hydrated.

I climbed the stairs once again, and this time, for what was genuinely, the first time, instead of heading to my chambers, I walked simply into the room which I knew had been hers.

The handle was dusty, as I should have known that it would be. No one had gone in since she had left, three years before that moment.

Even now, I curse myself that I could have allowed my own foolish self to do nothing for three entire years, but stay out by myself in my garden.

If I did not turn vampire, I would have died by the age of twenty-five.

The room was dusty as well, though there was nothing so ugly as a cobweb. Those do take longer to appear, as though out of nowhere, don’t they? I don’t exactly know.

Perhaps there was a cobweb. 

I was so unfamiliar with this room that I was surprised I could even remember where the room was. Though, I suppose it was only two doors down from mine.

For some reason, the sun which streamed in from the windows did not spread out like light usually does. It came in and landed in a patch, and vaguely lit the rest of the room just a little.

“Ah. It will have to do, I suppose,” I said, entering further into the room and squinting my eyes while I looked around and tried to find a chest, or drawers or something.

I put my hands out in front of me and began to grope around the empty, damp air.

I hated the feeling of all that empty space. I hated large, open space with a passion, though I never knew why.

FInally, my right hand found something long and metal. My eyebrows raised up and I began to smile.

I tested the give of it by pulling at it gently. I heard a sound, a small sort of thunk, and then a bit of a creaking noise, and I knew this was her wardrobe.

I stepped back and opened the door farther.

I knew I would have to plunge my hand into the space in the wood, and I prayed that no sort of mold had been growing inside, or that no insects had managed to find their way inside.

The soft pads of my fingers found their way to one of the inside barriers, and I sighed, and delved in further.

It had been a few minutes of blind searching when the side of my hand brushed over something, that then seemed to fall, and make a small clinking noise.

I gave a little inward gasp to myself, and then brought my hand down to the bottom of the wooden container to see if I could find whatever it was which had dropped.

Ah, there it was, something circular, and bulging. I gripped my fingers around the metal object and finally brought my hand out of the unseeable space.

What was that?

I squinted my eyes and tried to use the fact that they had begun to get used to the minimal lighting in the room more to my advantage than it really was, and brought whatever it was that I was holding closer to my face.

And, just my luck, the beams of light which fell into the room so nicely and yet so torturously dim, began to brighten as, most likely, a cloud dissipated and freed her golden bosom once more.

It was best described only as flat, and round, with a little bit of thickness. I knew it could not be the locket of a necklace, because it was much too large, and I knew it could not be a portable container for anything, it was too strangely shaped and thin for that.

Ah. Simply being dim. 

I had turned it to its other side and saw that it was one of those small clocks that people kept with them. They had been invented in Germany, I recalled, but the Italians took to them very quickly.

Well, this was certainly something. I had been expecting a book, not so much a clock. A necklace or a ring perhaps, if it was to be something in the way of personal accessory.

Though, I suppose, I had never really seen my mother with a necklace or a ring or jewelry of any kind. Jewelry was a mark of the status of a man or a woman, and of course, as my mother was not of high status, she had no money to throw around on jewelry, no money to trick people into thinking she was one of the elite.

I do not think that she was one of the sort of people that would ever wish to trick people into that sort of thing.

Actually, I had never seen her with this clock before either. Maybe it was a gift of some sort, that she just didn’t like enough to wear out anywhere.

I tried to examine the clock further, but my eyes were beginning to ache with the strain of it. Lord God, why was there no light in here? It was the middle of the day and there was a perfectly good and bright window right next to me.

Insane that there could be only but a few beams when this window was so open and wide and clean. What trickery was this?

I groaned out loud, and stood up fully. I had been crouching while I inspected the small clock.

I held no attachment to this little object and yet it felt like it if I ever let it go again I might begin to sob.

I gripped it tightly and brought it to my chest. I held it there, so that I could feel just a bit of it on my skin, a small part of it which was not held in my fingers, and it pushed through the thin fabric of my shirt, and I could almost feel its hard surface against my skin.

I closed my eyes as toughly as I could, so that I could not see even an inkling of that tender light through the gap between my eyelid and my lower lash line, and created for myself that sweet black, that dark so deep not even the knife of God’s light could cut through it.

I felt as though, in that moment, I could again feel the soft caress of my mother’s hand, the soft cushion of her thighs as I laid my head to rest upon them, and she ran her liquid hands through my fair hair. I felt, for one single moment, that I could hear her sing some song to me which I knew that she had never really sung, some strange little melody which I knew was simply a product of my own mind.

Even now, as I write down these words for you, I can almost hear her singing that queer song, those notes in her special tone, running over and over in my head.

But this was not the voice of my mother. This was the voice of some creature which I have built in my head so that I may pretend that I knew her more than I did.

If only I could remember her voice, Lord God if only, and I could put her voice into the notes, her voice into the song.

But the person who I was then, the person who held this little clock so tight to his feeble skin, he could hear her clearly, he could hear that cool, smooth fountain of love which poured from her mouth with every single sound.

And, this same man, began to sob. No tears came out of my eyes, but my body sobbed, and to weep without tears is greater punishment than to cry, for the hollow pain which endures is always greater than the full pain which is fleeting.

The sounds of this began to fill the room, and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to stop.

It wasn’t until I finally wrenched this accursed clock from the small expanse of my adolescent’s chest and looked down upon it, opening my eyes, that I could compose myself once more.

I could hardly see it, the cloudy gaze of sorrow, and the fog of darkness, but its outlines were there, and I knew that I was looking upon it, and that was enough.

My face must have been red, bright red, I could imagine. I ran my fingers over the edge of it again and again and again, and finally, I closed my eyes again, backed up slowly to the wall, and slid down it, until my bottom hit the floor, and I was sitting safely down in the damp darkness.

I do not know when I fell asleep, only that I did, and that it was not peaceful, that it was full of nothing but unrest and torture, as one should never have to expect sleep to be.

No dreams came to me that night, only a slight bout of darkness, and then my eyes opened again, and there was nothing to be found outside of myself but more darkness.

I was in the same place, I must have been, for even if my father had woken and found me here, he would not have had the thought of moving me. He would never even have bothered with the thought of it.

Though, as I fluttered my eyes open and closed several times with a swift rapidity, I realized that though the lighting which had been there was minimal, it did not exist anymore.

Ye gods, I had slept the whole day through. Such a terribly foolish, foolish thing to do!

Lord, I knew that if I wasn’t careful, I would all too easily make this into a pattern and switch my days with my nights. God only knows I was just the sort of lazy vagabond to do it.

I stood up, my hand only barely clinging onto the small clock, and looked around groggily, still icy with sleep.

Oh, I hadn’t given the plants their watering that morning. That wasn’t good. I neve forgot their morning watering.

Though, I could vaguely recall that there was something else which I was meant to do that day.

My head was so terribly absent. I looked down to the floor, and stared unblinkingly for a while. I did not think anything in words, simply played a jumble of pictures to myself and called it thinking. That was the only way I ever managed to recall anything.

Uh. Hm.

What was it?  
…

Vere.

Vere!

I had forgotten that I was meant to meet Vere as soon as it turned dark! Oh, and I didn’t know how late it was, and I hadn’t even left yet.

No, no there was no time to change. I shot out of the room, down the stairs, and rocketed straight out the front door, still carrying the clock with me, out into the night,

It was cold outside. Not the chill which had permeated me the night before, no, tonight it was truly cold.

I knew the cold for what it was. It was no thing of beauty, no bringer of life or even of calm. The cold was a villain, a cold and cruel villain. The raper of children and the slayer of fathers, that was what the cold was. I despised it truly. Even the slight chill from the preceding day had begun to approach my limit.

I went faster on that trek than I had ever really gone. I wanted to get to him faster, I needed to hurry as I had never really hurried before.

` Ah, yes, there were the docks. The ones that I had always hated, and yet now, I did not think of that.

I thought only that I had been so terribly idiotic, and that this man must have given up on seeing me, and it would wake me a thousand years to pick out which boat was his in this inky darkness.

I continued moving and yet everywhere I went I found nothing but hulking mass upon hulking mass, and I felt so, so stupid.

Perhaps, if I had not gone at all that night, or if I had come just an hour later, things would have been better.

I was about to collapse, to give up and be done with it, when something so burning white entered my vision.

What, what was that? An illusion, surely, for it was inconceivable that I could see something so clearly, something so white, in this light, and yet, there it was.

And it was a man. A face, and hands which I was looking at.

And suddenly, I heard a soft voice.

“Aley, is it you?”

For one single second, I thought that it was my mother whom had called out to me, and this white figure whom I saw was her, her ghost coming to me to tell me I had frozen to death and impart upon me final words of comfort.

But this did not last long.

The voice was unmistakably the voice of a man, and, the voice of a man whom I knew.

Ah, not the vision of mine mother dearest, but a different kind of savior, the man Vere.

I did not respond, and simply nodded, though I knew that he could not see me do this.

And the illusion which I had held, that his skin was a bright white and that I could see it so clearly, as though it were glowing, was gone, and I could see him still, but his flesh was a normal color, and illuminated by nothing other than a stream of moonlight.

We approached each other, and I felt as though I finally became acutely aware of how weak my knees were, and how much they trembled, and how much I longed to simply be off of them.

FInally, we came together, and we embraced. From him, there was a brief reprieve from the cold, and I revelled in it so truly, and I sank deeper into his arms, and I felt my legs give out from beneath me, and he made a little sound as all of my weight was put onto him.

“I was worried when you did not come to me,” he whispered into my ear. 

I said nothing, and instead only whimpered, as his heat was not great, and still I was bitten by the ice.

“Let us get you inside,” he said, and began to pull away from me. His am was around my waist though, and pulling me to him, and for this I was grateful, as still my knees felt weak, and I might have collapsed if I was left to my own so suddenly.

We walked together, he and I, in silence, to his boat.

Except, of course, for my voice, sounding so small, and my voice beginning to quiver, when I said, “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

“Oh, no, please do not worry over it. I am glad simply that you’re here, that you’re safe,” he said, looking down at my form.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said, “no, I- I didn’t mean to.”

To this he had no reply, and instead simply looked down upon me from his perch, as he pulled me just a bit tighter to his side.

His ship had not been very far at all, not as I had supposed. Though, somehow I knew that despite this, I would never have been able to find this on my own.

The tension and negativity which I had held before, before I had come to him, was still there within me. And, they only seemed to grow as we began to board.

“Wait,” I began, not wanting to do this any longer, “wait. Don’t take me on the boat.”

“Aley, are you alright?”

I shook my head and jerked away from him, though his hold was too strong for me to get away.

“No, no I don’t want to go on the boat.”

He tutted twice, shook his head gently and began to move his hand comfortingly over my waist.

“Do not worry, Aley, you needn’t worry. We just need you out of the cold. You look as though you’ll get sick if you stay out in this fost any longer.”

His words were soft, sweet, and his hand’s movements did comfort me, as surely he intended it to be. My tension was not gone, but I was beginning to lean into his suggestions.

“Aley, sweet, please, we can stay out here no longer. Come, come out of the cold.”

I took notice of how he said my name every time he spoke. Surely, he did this to put me at ease, to tell me that he was familiar and that I could trust him.

And, I did. I knew that he was right.

I paused for a while, until, I nodded, and allowed for him to guide me onto the ship with him.

He led me over the deck, and I thought that perhaps he would take me under, where the sailors would sleep, and instead he took me simply to a room which was not beneath. His quarters, then, were here.

The room was small, as I knew it would be, and the chill creeped in here as well.

He motioned for me to sit down upon the bed, and I did so without even a second thought. 

He himself sat down upon a feeble wooden chair, and looked at me as I sat there, shivering.

He shed his coat with slow, yet smooth motions, and he held it out to me.

“Please, you must put it on.”

I did not take it from him, instead simply looked into his eyes as he held it out, and said, “no, no I cannot. The cold surely torments you as well.”

He shook his head and, rather than continuing to hold it out to me, stood up, came closer, and draped it over my shoulders. He moved away again, and sat on the chair once more.

That was the only push I needed. The comfort of this warm fabric was too great for me to ignore. I put my arms through the sleeves, and snuggled up into it as far as I could.

It felt good. It felt warm. 

Yes, he had given me the warmth. He had given me the warmth in the middle of this torturous cold.

“You don’t have the energy to talk, mine, do you.”

“No, no but I will talk with you, Vere, I will talk with you though I have none of the energy required for it.”

He tilted his head to the side just a bit, and I suddenly realized I could feel the bobbing of the ship so keenly in my body.

“No,” he began, “you must not talk with me tonight. You must sleep.”

I shook my head slowly. “No, I cannot sleep. I have slept so much, so much you understand, I cannot.”

His head cocked further.

“But you have no energy,” he said, “and the cold just saps the life from someone. You must sleep.”

I don’t know how he managed to find my eyes in the darkness, but I knew that he was looking straight into my eyes as he said this. Somehow, I knew. 

And that was all it took. No further convincing, no more speaking. That was enough for me.

Though, what decency I had left in me, caused me to say, “but what of you? How can I sleep in this bed, when you will not have a place to sleep if I do?”

He did not respond to this, but I knew it was no problem. Something in my mind told me that this was no problem. That the bed was mine to use.

I sighed, and pulled Vere’s coat tightly around me, got under the covers, and began to lay down.

This, this bed was not like my own.

This bed was soft, and felt to me like the embrace of honey, only, so much more sweet. I felt as though I was suddenly a part of the only thing that mattered.

Oh my, truly, heaven. In truth, that I look back on it now, it was nothing special at all. Nothing like the plushness of today, just, so much more than what I had had in my home.

What such simple comforts can do to the sensibilities of the mind.

As I spiralled in and out of the beginnings of sleep, I could hear his voice come to me, and he said, “that lovely constant which we know.”

I hadn’t known what he had been talking about, or if he had been talking about anything at all, if it was just a statement, or the end of something which I had missed.

I believe that he had been referring simply to sleep, when he had said this, for it was in the moment and in my young life that there was no constant but that very thing. Sleep.

I didn’t realize until right that very moment, but, I still had not eaten. 

This night, I had no dreams. Though, as well, I had none of that uneasy or terrible feeling which I had had not so long ago.

Yes, this night my sleep was pleasant, and mellow, and I finally felt at peace.


	2. Chapter 2

When finally I did awake, I realized that I had only been asleep for a little while. I knew this simply because the small window in the door still showed the blackness of the atmosphere outside.

Well, perhaps that was good. I might have felt so guilty, if I had really slept in his bed all night. At least this way I could take my leave, and he would still have time to rest.

I sat up slowly in the bed, loving the way it felt beneath me still, and looked around groggily.

I closed my eyes tightly, and then opened them again, hoping that this action would make some sort of difference in the amount which I could or could not see.

The harsh cold which had seeped into the room before seemed to be gone entirely, and how this had happened so quickly, I did not know.

Vere’s coat felt warmer now than it had before, and it was so cozy over my arms and torso that I felt I would never want to take it off again.

Vere. Where was he? I hadn’t expected him to sit there in the room the whole time I was sleeping, that was ludicrous, but I did wonder about it.

My stomach grumbled, and I groaned just a bit. It felt hollow, strange. Weak.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been though, and I knew it. I was always told stories upon stories of the people exactly my age who could go weeks without eating a thing. 

I never really believed them. I thought, a week at most. I didn’t really think a person could go weeks without eating anything and still survive. 

Well. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do anymore. My brain told me that the night was not over yet, that I should simply rest more, and my body said the same, but my sense of reason told me that it was not good to sleep this much, that I should stay awake.

I remembered something suddenly. My hands came down to my pants, and I began to feel around in the small expanses of pockets which I had.

It wasn’t there! 

I felt around on the surface of bed which was around me, first with just one of my hands and then with the both of them, and I began to stress out when all that I felt was an uninterrupted plushness.

Were there any pockets in this coat? None on the outside, I realized, as I felt each side of it, and the stuck my hands inside.

None inside either.

Unless I got some light with which to see the rest of the room, I had to conclude that I had lost my mother’s pocket clock.

I cursed myself for doing this. I had gotten it only a few hours since, and of course I would have lost it so soon. Stupid, stupid.

Had I lost it on the way here? Had I dropped it in the house? Was it here, simply out of my reach, or on the floor?

I heard a noise suddenly, interrupting the frenzied silence which I had surrounded myself with completely, and I realized almost immediately that it was the door opening.

A dark blue poured into the expanse of the room as the door slowly opened itself and revealed this color to me. The majesty of the sapphire night is greater than the black.

“You’re awake?”

The words surprised me. I had of course figured that someone would have to have entered for the door to move open like that, but I hadn’t expected whoever it was to speak to me. Could they see me from where they were, in this light?

“I am,” I said, squinting, and focusing my eyesight on the person. I had hardly heard their voice.

It wasn’t until they came closer, not bothering to close the door behind them, that I realized it was simply Vere.

“You’ve been asleep for a while,” he said, backing himself up into the door and finally shutting it this way, never looking away, and enclosed the both of us in darkness once again.

My eyebrows furrowed.

“Really? But it’s still dark outside, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”

I couldn’t see him, if he did anything, if he smiled or didn’t, but I could hear him say, “it’s dark outside, now, not still.”

I was silent for a second. I didn’t know what he meant.

He laughed a little bit, clearly sensing my confusing, and I pouted and looked away.

“It was night, and then it was day, and now it’s night again.”

My eyebrows shot up, and I looked at where I thought that his face was.

“I slept that long?”

My voice was laced with worry, and I had to fight the childish urge I had to hug my legs close to my chest and bury my face in them.

“Yes, you did.”

I shook my head quickly, though I know he could not see it, and I said, “I- I’m sorry, so sorry, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to.”

I heard him shuffling, and it grew louder and I could feel his presence get closer. Soon, he was right beside the bed.

What was he going to do?

I heard a small sound, like something hard being picked up, and a few scraping noises, and finally, the flame of a candle.

I could see him finally, and the way that his face was illuminated by the light made me tremble. 

He was gorgeous like this, by the light of the one, single flame. 

He picked up the candle, and used it to light another candle next to it. He left this candle where it was, on the small table next to the bed, and held the other one, and moved it to the matching table near the chair he had been sitting in the night before.

This was better. I felt suddenly as though I hadn’t seen the light of the sun in a year, though I knew this was such a gross over-exaggeration.

“Oh, uh,” I began to take off his coat, so I could give it back to him, as it wasn’t cold anymore and if I didn’t give it back right then I was afraid I would forget to give it back at all.

He held his hands up in front of him and said, “no, please, keep it.”

“Oh, oh but I couldn’t. It’s yours, and it looks so expensive, and I just couldn’t.”

“No, no take it,” he said, making a dismissive gesture and smiling, “I could get another one like it any time I wanted. You need it more than I do.”

I said nothing, but I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks. I looked down at my chest, saw it there over my grass and dirt stained shirt, and I smiled.

I remembered the thing again which I had been so worried about only a little bit ago.

“Have you seen a pocket clock anywhere? I- I brought my mother’s, in my haste, and- a- and I can’t find it anywhere, anywhere at all!”

He looked off to the side and said, “no, I haven’t seen anything like that.”

“Oh.”

Well. I had expected that. Just one last ditch effort.

I began to cry.

There was nothing more important to me, in my child's mind, hardly begun puberty, than my mother’s pocket clock.

I should have left it there where it was. I shouldn’t have gone looking for any of her things in the first place. I had had dreams of learning how to read, and maybe learning how to write. I knew then that even if I had found one of her books, I could not have done it on my own.

I would have given up, before I had even begun to try, and put it back in its little hiding place, and forgotten about what I had meant to do, forgotten that it had even existed.

Maybe it was better this way. If I had kept that clock, I might have clung to it constantly. Maybe I’d become a crazy old man who would rave about his mom and his mom’s clock over and over, running circles over his own words.

I hadn’t even noticed that Vere had approached the bed, and approached me, until he wiped the pad of his thumb over my cheeks, ridding them of the streams there left by my tears,

I looked up into his eyes, mine own slightly blurry from the liquid, and I fell in love with the color of his eyes all over again.

He pulled me close and kissed his lips to my forehead, and I closed my eyes, as he said quietly, “don’t worry, mine, we’ll find it.”

I found it hard to believe I had only known this man for two, three days. He felt so comforting to me.

He was always so attentive, so kind. He made me feel like I was the most important boy in the world.

I opened my eyes again, and I saw him smile, and kiss my forehead again, and hug my body to him.

He dipped his head to the curve of my neck, and simply let it rest there.

“Vere,” I whispered. I was not addressing him, simply, I needed to say his name, to remember it as he held me, and I was so consoled by him.

Finally, he parted from me, and looked once again into my eyes, and he said, “would you like for me to walk home with you?”

I said, “you don’t have to do that.”

He shook his head and said, “no, do you want me to?”

I averted my eyes away from him, and I said, “yes.”

He smiled, and stood up, and held his hand out for me to take.

I did, and he pulled me up off of the bed, though he had no reason for it.

We left his room, and together we walked across the deck, and finally off of the boat itself.

I didn’t realize just how much my body had gotten used to the rocking of the ship until finally I was on solid land again.

The smell of the sea was thick in almost all of Naples, but of course, nowhere was it so strong as near the docks. The salty tinge of the air was blissful, when one knew how to truly appreciate it.

There were people all about on the docks, only they hardly moved, simply speaking to each other or lost in their view of the landscape, and they hardly made any noise at all, and so I felt as though Vere and I were alone, solitude in our own world with only the company of the night and the sky.

“Your plants must be faring terribly,” he said, looking down to me, “going two days without water.”

Yes, he was right. I hoped that this would not have been too much for some of the more fragile ones.

But…

How had he known that it had been two days?

I had only been with him for two nights and a day. He wouldn’t have known that.

I looked up and over at him, but he was already looking somewhere off to the side, trapped up in his thoughts, so I turned back ahead of myself, and ignored the thought.

He had probably slipped up, or meant that I hadn’t been able to give them last evening’s watering.

Still…  
I looked back at him again, and this time, he was looking back at me.

I quickly turned my gaze in front of me again, but I could feel him staring at me still.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

I made a small sound, and looked at him through my peripheral, so I didn’t have to turn my head.

“Simply that the weather is much improved.”

Somehow I knew that he did not believe this. Something told me that.

But, if this was true, he did not bother to ask about it again, and instead simply began to walk a bit closer to me.

The silence which he and I shared was so precious, and I often found myself looking up to him to see if he held the same wonder in him which I did.

It was not long before we were at my home. The wonderfully happy thumping of my heart had sped up the walk much.

I supposed that I must have found the way to my own house unconsciously, because I knew it could not have been him leading the way. 

“I’ll leave you here then,” he said, after I had indicated to him which of the properties was my own.

He looked down into my eyes, and then all around us. When he saw no one, he turned his gaze back to me, and once again, kissed my forehead.

He began to walk away from me, and I could not keep my eyes off of his retreating form, surrounded by the cool sapphire night, and yet overshadowed by nothing.

I sighed, and turned then to the door. I opened it, stepped inside, closed it again, and stopped.

I wanted to go to the garden and take care of my plants immediately, but I knew that my father must have been worried out of his mind after I had been gone so long.

I walked upstairs quietly, and turned into the sitting room, mostly so that I could get to the hallway, thinking that I would find him in his room.

But I didn’t have to do that.

He was there, sitting around lazily, and drinking straight from the bottle of some sort of liquor or other.

He didn’t hear me come in, so I came closer, and I said, “father?”

His eyes snapped to me, and then widened.

His mouth opened wide, and his bottom lip began to tremble as he looked at me.

“Y- you’re here.”

I nodded, confusion filling every inch of my mind, and said, “I am.”

He stood up, his legs shaking, and he looked at me, his eyes searching my face, and then looking at the coat that I wore.

“N- no, but…”

“Father, you’re beginning to have me worried. How much did you drink?”

He shook his head, and collapsed back down onto the seat, putting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

“...you must have been worried over me in my absence. I didn’t mean to be gone so long, father, you must believe me.”

Yet somehow, as I looked at him there, his strong body, and his oily hair, like my own only in color, I realized that that wasn’t it. He wasn’t reacting like this because he had been worried about me.

No, that wasn’t it at all.

“Father,” I began, my voice steady, “I said, you must have been worried. You were worried, weren’t you, father?”

He looked up at me, and I saw that his face was bright red.

I had an idea in my head, as I looked at him. A bad idea. I would never go through with something like that. Not to my father.

He got up slowly, and began to move. He held that circle in his movement, veering around me carefully, the sort of dance that one expects from a cheesily filmed duel.

Only, this was no duel. He backed up once he was near the hall, and he walked down it, still facing me.

It was only too soon before he disappeared into his room.

I stopped.

I began to think.

How had I been able to think about doing such things to my own father? I had no reason to dream of it in the first place, I didn’t even know that he had done anything wrong.

The devil has found a home in my heart, I thought to myself. I must repent.

But I would go to no church. Rather, I walked down the stairs, and went out the back door into the yard.

I walked slowly through the small maze of plants, stopping frequently to check each of them for any signs of wilting or decay or spots, or even things so simple as bites from bugs.

Then, I picked up the crude sort of watering pot that I had, as the nicer, modern watering pots would not be invented until several hundred years later, and I took to work with it.

“You all must be so thirsty,” I mumbled once to myself, when I was about a fourth of the way through the yard.

I swore to myself at once that I would not be so irresponsible again. I loved the garden too much to allow it to wither due to something so simple as my own idiocy.

There was one plant, one which I had not planted, which had simply begun to sprout one day, no doubt brought here on the wind, that I always like to talk to.

I called it The Foreigner, and had fun with it.

I looked down on it today, only barely illuminated in the light of the night, and I said, “hello today, you.”

I paused, to let it answer.

“Did you miss me?”

Another pause.

“Well, you might be the only one that did.”

…

“He didn’t miss me, no. Do you know why he’s been acting the way he has? I’m worried about him.”

…

“No, I suppose you don’t. Not a lot of people talking about their business in gardens.”

…

“Yes, except for me. But only to you! It’s not as though I go around declaring things to myself.”

While The Foreigner spoke, I began to inspect his leaves. I hadn’t done so on my first rounds through, because I always made a point to speak to him first.

“You’re growing beautifully,” I said, when finally I was done with this arbitrary little task.

“No spots, or bug bites or anything…” I added, mumbling to myself.

…

“I’d better move on, old friend, but we’ll speak in the morning, yes?”

…

“Yes, you too,” I said, and began to smile. I stopped crouching then, and stretched my back. It gave a few satisfying pops, and I sighed and brought my hands back to my sides.

Yes, that’s my little secret. How I managed to get through three years without speaking to a single soul. I spoke to a plant. 

I didn’t believe, of course, that they actually spoke back to me. It was simply the principle of the thing, that they kept me company for so long. So even though I had a person to talk to all of a sudden, Vere, I did not stop talking to my plants, because I didn’t want to disrespect my old friends.

I mean really, how rude, cutting ties with your friends just because you found a new one.

I continued my task, on and on, until finally, I was finished for the night, and I entered the house once again.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had slept so much I felt as though I might pass away if I went to sleep again, but, I had nothing to keep myself busy with until the day came again.

All I did for the rest of the night was lay about and distract myself with fantasies of the future. Of what my garden might look like, and the girl who I might one day marry, far off into the future.

I had never been particularly interested in women, but I figured that this was just because I had not yet become a man, and that once I did. I would understand.

And, I found myself thinking about Vere.

I fantasized about his eyes, and his warm and reassuring embrace, and I even brought my coat to my nose, to try and find his smell.

But, I soon found out that the only smell upon it was my own. 

Well, it was no matter. I had my memories of him, my memories of the sound of his voice, and the knowledge that this coat had been his, even if he did not smell like it.

I didn’t know what it was that held me so intrigued by him. I could not even begin to fathom that I had any attraction for him.

That was the worst thing a man could do, I had always been taught, love another man.

Of course I feel differently now.

I believe that there is truly nothing so pure as homosexual love, that something which has been eased and killed time and time again may pass on and thrive, become more than the terrible secrecy and hopes for a better future, transform into something so gorgeous and fervent. 

The face of so many men and women long-forgotten by history looked up to the same moon which I look up to now and they prayed that one day people like them could live in peace, be out, be known. 

The time for that has come, has it not? The fight continues still, but their dreams are finally beginning to weave themselves into the tapestry of humanity. Yes, indeed, nothing so pure, so utterly magic.

But back then, in my mortal life, I held the same views of it as everyone else did. That it was so, so terrible.

Simply, I thought that I was thinking these things about him because he was my only friend, and that we were so close. I thought that that was how all men felt about their friends.

The hours whiled away so quickly, I hardly had time to breathe. It was, to me, as though I simply blinked, and the light had come.

I didn’t want to water the plants too early, since I had watered them so late the night before, and I didn’t want to give them too much.

So, I waited around a bit. I thought about eating something, but once again, something inside of me was bidding me not to do it.

I knew that I should, that it was bad of me not to, and yet I could not physically bring myself to do it.

Then, I walked outside, and my eyes almost popped out of my head.

I had not known this the night before, when I had checked the leaves of all of them, because of the dark, but when I looked at them now, I saw that they were totally unchanged by the two days loss of water.

But how was this possible? Insane, that they had not lost any of their color, or had not begun to droop at all.

I did not know how this could be so. How, how? 

Of course, I was happy, happy that my foolishness had not harmed them, but I was confused, so utterly confused.

I was similar to the people of my age, very similar, but unlike them, I did not thank God for this miracle and then go about my business. I was not going to do that. I entertained the idea not even for a second.

The devil is the one who lures people in with the trickery of beauty and nature. God deals out only just consequence.

Had my father taken care of them while I was gone? That must have been it. 

Lord, I had been so stupid as to think that he hadn’t cared. He must have, or he wouldn’t have done such a thing for me.

I almost began to weep from the joy I felt, that he was truly my papa after all, and that he had been thinking of me so.

And to think that I had been so eager, so swift in my anger, my rage at him. I should have known that love can be so often quiet. Shown in the actions, never the words.

Suddenly, I felt the strongest urge to go to his room, to find him and to hug him, and to weep in his arms, and to apologize so profusely for how I had acted the night before, for how I had blamed him so easily, for how I had not even stopped to think for even a moment before jumping to distrust.

I wanted to go to him and to say, ‘papa, I am so sorry! I will never doubt you again, papa.’

But, I thought, he had had a late night. And, no doubt, he had drunk himself into a stupor, and his head would be hurting. Let him rest, I thought.

I would simply do my watering, and then I would do all of these things which I wished to do later, when he had awoken and the pain in his head had settled just a bit.

The sun poured down over me like hot lava running down my back. Strangely hot, even for a place so mediterranean. 

I had always hated the cold, but I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t get to be very hot either.

It wouldn’t be good for me  _ or _ my plants.

The day was uneventful, not worth outlining in this book, and I certainly don’t have the time for outlining every uneventful day.

I met with Vere again that night. Only, this time, he came right to my doorstep.

I was in the sitting room, again, when I thought I heard a small sort of rapping noise.

I didn’t hear it very well though, and it was gone soon, so I simply ignored it.

It wasn’t until it came back a second time, much louder, that I realized it was someone knocking on the front door.

I made a small sound, realizing that I had kept some poor soul waiting outside in the beginnings of the evening, and I raced down the stairs.

I came to the door, and said, “who is it?”

The voice I heard through the door was sweet, and I recognized it almost instantly.

“Vere,” it said, and I smiled a big sort of smile, and opened the door.

He was dressed up, I noted immediately, and I couldn’t help but take note of as well, that he looked so, so handsome.

And, he was holding a package.

“Please,” I said, stepping aside and allowing him space to enter, “come in.”

He stepped in, and, instead of looking around as I expected him to, kept his eyes firmly on me.

I closed the door and then turned my gaze back to him.

“Are you free tonight?” he asked.

“Free?” I responded, knitting my eyebrows together.

“Yes,” he said, “free. I want to take you to see a performance. A play, I mean.”

“A play? But… but isn’t that a bit… strange? For a child to go to a play with an adult?”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he waved his hand dismissively and looked off to the side and said, “nothing wrong with it at all. It’s only the theatre.”

I still had my doubts, however. I didn’t think that it would be proper for me to go at all, let alone with a grown man who wasn’t a part of my family.

He sensed this in me, no doubt from my face, or something like that, and he said, “oh really, Aley, you’re worrying over nothing. This is simply nothing big at all! Now come on, we’ll go to the theatre, I’ll get you something to eat, and we’ll be back here in hardly any time at all.”

I was still hesitant, but rather than attempt to convince me again, he said, “oh! That reminds me.”

He held out the package which he had been holding to me, and I looked down at it hesitantly for a second, and he said, “I got you something.”

I took it from him slowly, and looked up to him cautiously.

“It won’t bite you,” he said, looking into my eyes, then looked down to it and said, “go on, open it.”

I did as he said, though I wasn’t incredibly eager in the task.

The layers of paper covering the object were many, and I had to go through layer after layer, watching the whole grow smaller and smaller, until finally, I saw what it was.

My eyes widened.

My lips began to quiver.

I looked up at him.

I smiled, and threw my arms around him ecstatically.

I heard him chuckle in my ear, and I shoved my face into the crook of his neck, and had to stop myself from wetting the fabric of his shirt with any tears.

He put his head in the same place on my open shoulder, and he picked me up, and spinned me around.

I hadn’t been prepared for that, and I began to laugh, pushing my head closer to him.

He set me down then, and looked into my eyes, and said, “I knew you’d like it.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said, finally allowing for the liquid to begin to well in my eyes.

“You could start,” he said, supplying me with his sweet smile, “by letting me take you to the theatre.”

I nodded my head vigorously, “yes, yes of course I’ll go with you!”

His smile grew bigger, and he said, “you’re going to adore it, I just know.”

And we went out into the night together, my mother’s hand clock tucked safely in the pocket of the coat he had given me, and a smile on my face.

“The terrific night simply tears a man to pieces,” I said, looking up to the infinite pool of pure, liquid wonder that was the sky.

“Yes,” he said, “it truly does.”

And the theatre was special. I had never gone before, never gone. The laughs, the laughs which I had there, on that night, I remember greatly, the sparkle in his perfect eyes, I remember so greatly as well, the expanse of people around us, I can remember vaguely.

But above all this, I remember how it affected the way I felt about Vere. 

He had become something special to me. He had become the embodiment of the word new.

He brought to me new things, new experiences, new things, new love, and he restored that which was old.

This was what had brought me over the edge. I did not love him yet, you understand, no it was too early for that, and I too young, but this was what brought me to the threshold, and looking back, I know now that this was where my fate was sealed finally.

I cannot remember the play. Every time I try to bring it forth to my mind I can hear only a saccharine melody played upon a piano, and I can only see the things which I have described to you from that night already.

But this does not matter. It was him, it was the beginnings of that passion for him starting to form in my child’s heart.

He took me to an inn of immeasurable luxury, at least for my feeble mind at the time, and treated me to a meal so large, I could not believe it was truly real.

“Surely this is not all for me,” I had said, “where is your food?”

He shrugged and said, “I ate early. I couldn’t possibly take any more.”

Normally, this would not have convinced me in the least, but as I had not eaten in multiple days, my mind was so consumed with the food that I accepted this incredibly easy.

He treated me to a wine, as well. I had never really had any wine before, simply for the fact that I had never thought to.

I drank more than my fill of this wine, and I ate more than my fill of the spread as well.

By the time that I was finished with all of this, and I had lingered and listened to the music being played, and revelled enough in the scene of the rich place, it was already very late.

I was singing to myself and spinning and dancing as we walked together back to my house. I had never been so happy, so entertained and so fulfilled in my entire life before then, and I could not contain myself for a single moment.

He was smiling so happily as he looked at me, and at one point had even started to hum the song I was singing.

Finally, we came to the step of my door once again, and I said, “I’d hate for you to walk back on your own this late. We have an empty room, you must rest there.”

He shook his head and said, “you worry for nothing, mine, I’ll be more than fine. It’s you I’m worried about, you look as though you’ve danced yourself into a stupor.”

I giggled and performed a small little spin, to show him I had not finished my dancing for the night.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” I began, “tomorrow night, indeed.”

And he came forward and embraced me, and I embraced him as well, and he put his head into the crook of my neck, as he always did.

Only, this time, I felt his lips come down to the skin there.

They were icy, and sent a shiver shooting up my spine. His kiss there felt deep, too deep. I didn’t know that was how kisses felt, on the neck.

I couldn’t help but moan, and my entire body felt cold, and I began to tremble, and moved my head to the side.

Finally, he pulled away from the embrace, and from my neck, and he looked down at me.

His eyes were glazed, and his gaze felt intense, as he stared down at my shaking form, and then back to my neck.

He licked his lips, and then looked back to my eyes, and said, “good night, Aley.”

Without even waiting for me to respond, he began to walk away.

It wasn’t until he was a hundred or so feet away from me that I mumbled, “good night as well, Vere.”

I felt so drowsy, all of a sudden, and though my terrible joy was there still, it seemed that all the energy had been sapped straight from me, and I could not wait to sleep, or I felt as though I might fall to slumber standing up.

That night, I did not water the garden. As I said, I was too tired, and I felt that if I did, I might collapse outside on the grass.

I had such a hard time getting up the stairs, but I thought nothing of it. I thought only of sleeping upon that hard, little bed, and of seeing Vere again.

I did not know this at the time, but that night, Vere had tasted my blood for the first time.

And, I did not know quite how sweet it had been.

It was another dreamless night, but my sleep was deep, because my body was so tired, and because of this it was peaceful.

And thus, I have described for you how it was with Vere in great detail.

This went on uninterrupted for two years.

He would take my blood once every two weeks. Only, as time went on, he began to take a little more than the time before, and my body was left feeling more and more tired afterwards. And still, I did not know he did this.

I spent all night with him, every night, and devoted my days to caring for my garden, which grew more verdant, and the plants grew bigger as well, and flowers came and went, and new plants began to grow, some planted by me, and some coming up on their own, and I fell deeper and deeper into love with him.

My connection with him had isolated me from my father. I almost never saw him anymore, and I began to feel as though he never left his room.

I repeated this process of not eating for days on end, and then consuming whatever it was that Vere had gifted to me, and the time of starving had only made the final reward of food seem so much greater than it actually was.

He had consumed my life totally, and entirely. For two, two entire years, I spoke to no one but him.

It was not until, one day, when I had finished watering my plants hours ago, and was simply laying out upon the grass, near a bush of flowers, revelling in the perfume of them and staring up towards the sky, that the course of my life veered off its horribly perfect circle.

There was a gate, to my garden, which meant that you could reach it without having to go through the house.

I never opened it, as I had no real reason to, and I always tended to just use the back door, and, I hadn’t remembered opening it that morning at all.

But, I realized that I must have, because, a man had wandered in, and was looking down at me.

For a while, I just blankly stared at him, looking at him but not really taking in any information about him, until finally I realized that this was an actual person that was looking down at me as I lay on the grass, and I immediately shot up.

We looked each other in the eyes, not saying a thing for the longest time, and I finally got a good look at him.

The man had eyes like… jewels stolen from the very neck of an angel. They were a dark green, the sort of color that made you want a million things with nothing but that shade, and they came together so beautifully, I felt as though I had never in my life seen eyes quite like them.

His hair was a bright, shining auburn. Burning, and vibrant. It was straight, incredibly so, and very long, going to about halfway down his back, and tucked behind only one ear, the other side curving near the eye, but not coming over it at all.

And suddenly, as I looked at him, I knew what life was made for. I knew what life was truly, truly meant to be.

He cocked his brow and said, “...if that’s alright,” and, I realized I hadn’t been listening.

And, I was at a loss for words.

“C- can you say that again?”

He chuckled at me, and I almost swooned simply from how gorgeous this one simple sound was.

“I asked if you would let me sketch your garden. I see it every time I walk past this house, and when I saw your gate was open, I couldn’t help but come and see it.”

Then, he looked off to the side, and continued, “I would ask to paint it, but I don’t generally bring my painting supplies on walks.”

And I saw that he had a bundle of paper with him, and I said, “but you bring your sketching materials with you?”

I saw his cheeks turn pink and he averted his eyes from me and said, “truth be told, I was planning on coming to the door.”

“Ah, well,” I began, “feel free to sketch however long you need.”

His grin was large, and toothy, and he looked around, and said, “do you have something I might sit on? A bench or a stool perhaps?”

“Oh! Uh… wait here.”

I was sure that I had begun to blush as well as I rushed into the house through the back door, and looked around quickly.

There was a stool there after all. I picked it up, and turned it around with both hands, before I left for the outside again.

His eyes seemed to brighten as I held it out to him, and he put his hand up to his chin in thought, and said, “hm… I need to find  _ just _ the right spot.”

And then without giving it a second thought, he dropped the stool down right next to where he was standing, and sat down.

He turned his eyes to me and said, “why don’t you come, and sit with me awhile?”

My eyes widened, and I didn’t move.

“Oh come on, you’re not just going to stand there and watch me, are you?”

He waved me over, and finally, I came and sat down by the side of the stool.

He pulled a piece of charcoal from somewhere in his pockets, and placed the bundle gently on his legs.

Then, he placed the charcoal upon the top sheet, and began to create.

We stayed together in silence for a few minutes, I looking up at him, and he looking up at the flowers, and then back to his work, and every once in a while moving his eyes to meet mine, and never taking the smile off of his face.

“What is your name?” he asked, his hair teetering on the edge of his shoulder, threatening to come free and block his eye contact with me.

“My name is Aley,” I said, looking up to him on the stool.

He looked away from me then, staring back up at the flora in front of him, and whispered to himself, “Aley,” in such a way that it seemed as though he were letting it roll around all over his tongue, and then he said it to himself a few more times as he gazed down at the paper, and did some things with the stick, and then finally he looked back to me and he said, “I’m Prospero.”

“Prospero,” I said, trying to mimic the way that he had said my name, and finding that I rather liked the name, the way that it sounded, the way that it was put together.

He hummed in response to this, a sweet sort of hum that was pleasant to the ears, and for the first time ever, I noticed the birds chirping around us.

The silence we shared was gorgeous, as we sat together in the environment which I had created with my own hands, surrounded by it totally.

And he began to hum again, only this time it was not the regular kind given in response, this time it was the sound of song, and as it grew slowly louder, I closed my eyes and allowed for my body to sway in time with it.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying my humming but I really do wish you’d hold still.”

My eyes opened gently, and I looked back up to him in confusion.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I know I said that I would only be sketching the garden, but… When I saw how much like a flower you were, how much like the lily, I couldn’t resist the temptation.”

“You think me like a lily?” I asked, “In what way?”

“Well,” he said, setting down his piece of charcoal and moving his hand to cup a shape in the air which did not exist, “delicate, pale, and sculpted with the softest lines.”

“Hm,” I said, “I never saw the lily that way before.”

“I’m glad then,” he began, “that I’m the one to change your mind.”

“How old are you?” I asked him.

Then, I opened my mouth again to apologize for saying something so rude out of the blue like that, like I would have if I were speaking to Vere, but before I could say a single thing, he spoke.

“I’ve just turned nineteen,” he said, finally picking up his utensil again, and setting back to work.

Ah! So he was near to my age, older only by a few months.

“You look so young,” he said, “but I can tell from your eyes that you can’t be much younger than me.”

My eyebrows raised quickly, and I said, “from my eyes? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say anything like that before.”

“Here,” he said, handing me the top paper from the bundle which he held on his legs, “tell me what you think so far.”

The sketch was only just beginning, but my form was there, sitting loosely and, so delicately, so unlike myself, surrounded by all that which I had cultivated, on every side, and though my body had not been expanded upon, my face had no features and my hair was only an outline, it seemed to me as though this illustrated figure held the infinite beauty of all which has light in one, small, package.

“I love it,” I said, hardly being able to tear my eyes away.

“Harnessed the artistry of God,” I mumbled, vaguely recalling something which my mother had said, almost a decade before, in regards to painters.

And though this was no painting, Prospero was himself a painter, and I could imagine how it would look if it were one, stretched out up upon the canvas, or upon the wooden panel, or even upon the wall of some gorgeous room.

“You think so?” his face had brightened all of a sudden.

“More than that,” I said, handing it back to him, and feeling so keenly as his hand brushed over mine when he took it, “more than I can say.”

“You’re just flattering me,” he said, “and just because I like it doesn’t mean you’re allowed to do it.”

“Oh?” I said, feeling the smirk grow on my face, “You want me to stop?”

“Well…” he said, averting his gaze, “I didn’t say that.”

I couldn’t help but giggle, and he began to laugh too, after just a bit.

“I regret taking so long to do this,” he said, “I didn’t know the caretaker of this place was so sweet.”

“What would you have done if you did know?”

“I wouldn’t have wasted so much time away.”

My smile felt so pleasant, so right, and something inside of me knew that I wanted to meet with him again.

He got to work again with his sketching, and I could only wonder what it would look like when he finished.

Another silence passed, and this time it was long, and I lay down onto the grass, feeling it cushion my head, and hearing the sound of the wind working its way through the blades, I closed my eyes, and sighed in content.

I must have dozed off for a short time, too wrapped up in the peace and calm of the situation to be courteous to the man next to me, because when I opened my eyes again, he was looking down at me, and smiling so tenderly.

“Oh, there you are.”

“Here I am.”

I smiled back at him as I said this, and suddenly I wished that he would come and lay down beside me, but I knew that he wouldn’t.

“I finished the sketch, while you were sleeping.”

“Oh! You must show me!”

He handed me the piece of paper again, and I took it, and examined the picture.

The thing which I noticed first, is just how beautifully drawn the garden itself was, just how softly put-together every single plant was, how each leaf just barely hung on, as though a single breeze could pluck them off.

The second thing I noticed, is that the figure of me, so much more detailed, was bare naked there upon the grass.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise and I said, “I- I’m nude!”

“Really? You look as though you’re wearing clothes to me.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

I could feel the heat so keenly as it seemed to pour into the expanse of my cheeks, and I knew that he could see this on my face.

“Did I get something wrong?” he said, taking it back and examining it very closely.

“I- Well, I-”

He laughed again, and said, “I can change it, if it bothers you.”

“No, no, I didn’t say that… It was just a surprise, is all. I love it.”

He smiled, so pleasantly, and though I knew it was so wrong, I wanted to come forward and press my lips to his.

I had never felt this way with Vere, I realized then. I didn’t love Vere, not like I thought.

But here, here was this man, and I just, just wished that he would kiss me.

His face approached me, and mine approached his, and the air seemed to rush away from the space between us all at once, and finally, the soft plush of his lips came to mine.

I couldn’t help but smile into the kiss, and I felt his mouth do the same, and my eyes closed slowly, and I could not stop myself from falling so deeply into this action we shared.

His lips were so soft, so velvety. 

I forgot for this moment all of my restrictions about the love of another man, all my guilt about thinking such things about other men, all my negative feelings at all, and I thought only about Prospero.

He pulled away from me first, and looked straight into my dark brown eyes, and I couldn’t help but delve into his, and his mouth moved just a bit, though no noise came out, and he turned his gaze to my lips.

“I should probably… I should probably go,” he began, allowing his eyes to linger there, but then turning them back to my eyes, and continuing, “I’ve been here for quite a bit now.”

He gathered his charcoal and deposited it somewhere in one of his pockets, and then grabbed the bundle of paper he had brought with him, putting the sketch back on top.

I stood up as well.

“Thank you,” he said, “for letting me linger here.”

“It was no problem at all,” I started, “I rather enjoyed your company.”

He smiled, and said, “goodbye, then,” and turned to leave, but I began to speak before he got too far.

“Wait,” I said, “will you come back tomorrow?”

He turned his head as far to me as he could, so that I could see only his profile, and he said, “I will.”

“Maybe you’d like to come inside next time.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said, and turned his head away again, and began to walk away, and this time I did not stop him.

He finally closed the garden gate as he left.

I sighed, and sat back down upon the grass, and allowed myself to lay my back upon it once again, right where I had been before he had come.

I began to murmur to myself, my eyes opening and closing drowsily, and moving my lips more than I needed to, simply so I could feel the way that they moved with every word.

“And the name of the man who was let into heaven first was death, and he did not know how to smile, but his face did know how to cry,” I began, finally allowing my eyes to close completely, to stop opening them, and continued, “and he was sent back down to the earth, for God thought that he wept at being sent to the land up above.”

I knew that I was going to see Vere that night, but all of a sudden, I wasn’t looking forward to it anywhere near as much anymore.

I felt the sun fall and warm the gentle skin which was exposed, felt its beams light up the flesh and show it the face of that which is good, that which is cozy.

I must have fallen asleep again, because I began to dream.

I had a dream that Prospero was sitting next to me, brushing his hair, and humming the song which he had already hummed to me that day in the garden, and I began to hum along, and I took the brush from him, and he turned his back to me and allowed for me to take over the task.

Such a simple scene and yet it felt as though it lasted a lifetime. And, I would have been fine if it did. So blissful, so laced in honey and milk, I might have slept forever if some greater being had come to me and told me I would get to have this dream over and over again.

And there was no place so calming as the ground outside, when the grass was beneath you and it had upon it the dew which so many poets describe so lovingly, and it all smells of lush greenery, and it comes together so softly you feel as though you could simply sink into it. No place quite like where I was.

When once again I woke, the gentle smell of the grass had begun to fade just a bit, most likely due to the fact that I had been so close to it for so long, and my nose had begun to get used to it and was blocking it out.

It was still day, but the light of the sun was just beginning to dampen, and I smiled that I had woken at just the perfect time.

No doubt my hair was tangled. It was not very long, the side bangs going down only to my jaw, but it was thick, and wavy, and it was best if I brushed it every few hours.

I had not eaten in two days, and though I knew that tomorrow, Vere would take me to eat, and that it was always so much better if I did not eat, and I never did unless he gave me the food, but just today, I wanted to eat something of my own.

So I did.

I had a bit of bread, with cheese, and it seemed to me as though it was simply the best meal I had ever eaten.

I felt as though doing this, eating of my own volition, was something bad. As though it was something I should not be doing, something I should be stopping immediately.

But I did not stop. It was my own body, and I would eat if I damn well pleased.

It’s not as though there was anyone there to stop me anyway.

I would have to change, I knew. I always had to change. It wasn’t that Vere had ever told me not to wear the dirty clothes I wore for my garden work, but, I simply did not feel right going anywhere with him wearing them.

Spending any time with him always made me feel insecure about something or other, as much as I enjoyed his company.

Simply it seemed as though he had lost his spark, like whatever it was that had drawn me to him at first was beginning to fade.

I went out with him that night. This night, we were simply going on a walk through the city, as we so often did I had begun to tire of simply walking through the city. 

“Care to tell me what you’re thinking about?” he asked, looking at me, and though I was looking straight ahead of myself, I could see him do this from my peripheral.

Normally, I would not tell him what it was that was truly on my mind, out of fear of being rude or disrespectful, but this day, I did.

“I’m simply so tired of doing the same thing, again and again with you. We’ve been doing this for two years, and yet it seems as though it’s been a hundred. We even talk about the same things over and over again.”

I couldn’t see how he reacted to this, what expression was on his face, because I stopped focusing on it, and instead focused on what was directly in front of me.

Looking back on it now, I am almost sure his face had contorted in anger.

But if it had, he did not show this in his voice. No, there was no anger in the words he said, only a steady, sullen, menace.

“Tired of this, are you? Tired of me?”

I couldn’t help the way that my spine stiffened, the way that my eyes winced, the way that a cold sweat ran down my back.

But I kept walking, as did he, and I simply kept my eyes forward, because I felt that if I met his for even a second, my heart might begin to palpitate.

We passed by an alleyway, and in one instant, I felt myself being pulled inside.

“I asked you,” he began, and I realized that he had pulled me in, and he was trapping me there, and I had been right about my heart, “if you were tired of me.”

“N- no, no I didn’t mean that, I- I just meant that I’m, that I’m-”

I had never been afraid of him before this moment.

“Spit it out, spit it out.”

“I just meant that maybe we should,” I swallowed, and my throat felt tight, and I looked off to the side, and I said, “change things up.”

He smiled, and I did not like it anymore. I did not like his smile anymore.

He leaned his head forward, and kissed his lips to my forehead, and I wanted to shrink away from it, but my head was firmly against the wall.

I was frozen.

His lips were an icy cold, and hard, hard like stone, and he moved them down, down to my eyelids. They kissed them too, and I had closed them tightly.

He kissed my cheeks, each one, making me shiver, and then finally, he dipped his head down to the crook of my neck, and brought his hand up around my head, and forced it to the side.

He bit me, and this time I knew that it was no simple kiss, because this time, it hurt.

I could not help but cry out from the jolt of pain that filled me, and he forced my head further.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know what he was doing.

My body felt hard, brittle, and unmoving, and I could hardly see a thing.

I fell into some sort of dream state, some terrible sort of tormented dream, in so much pain, so much pain.

I felt as though I could hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children and the yells of men, some wailing for their God, and some wailing, for they realized there was no God at all.

Finally, he let me go, and I felt my body drop to the floor, and I looked up at him from my position down upon the ground, and I felt so afraid, so afraid and so betrayed.

I hadn’t known what he had done, not truly, only that he had hurt me, that he had brought on that vision of the suffering crowd, and that was enough for me.

Suddenly I felt empty, throbbing. 

I could hardly speak.

“What… what did you do to me?”

“Oh, dear,” he said, crouching down, and inspecting me with his hungry eyes, “I do hope I didn’t take too much.”

He stood up straight again, and looked down upon me, and he said, “have I changed things up enough for you?”

He knew that I did not know how to answer him, that even if I did, it would be so, so hard for me to do.

And, he simply walked away.

I watched so closely as his figue disappeared into the dark pool that was the night, and I was alone, my body hardly able to move, barely better than limp and strewn across the alleyway floor, and the black inky atmosphere falling down over me, and covering me, too heavily, like the avalanche that kills the young explorer.


	3. Chapter 3

The first time I tasted sex, it was being forced upon my mind, a terrible vision, a mess of pain and noise.

I was so painfully aware of my body during it, the vision, like whatever terrible creature which had pushed it onto me had an intimate knowledge of each and every single one of my nerve endings, all of my weaknesses, my soft spots, and things which I enjoyed in a sensual manner, which I did not even know myself.

I do not know the start, it hurts to try and recall, to try and bring it forth, I can’t. I only remember the first strike of pain this fictional me felt, when my body was thrown out into the middle of a room, and my thighs were shaking, and they gave out from beneath me, and I came crashing down onto the tough stone floor.

A choir of voices began to laugh at me, except they all had the same timbre, and I knew it was one man, one man surrounding me on every side, laughing at me a hundred times over and over again.

I struggled onto my back and faced the direction from which I had been thrown, the direction I knew the offender would be.

Vere.

He stared down at me, seeming to me at that moment to be taller than the reaches of heaven, and a strange sort of shadow covered his clothing.

Any fear I might have felt when he had abandoned me to death in that alleyway was magnified tenfold when I saw the way his eyes were so…

This fear entered into me all at once, a hammer, and my heart seized, and began to pound like the feet of the elephant, and soon it was all that I could hear, and I could feel my fingers seize and clutch at the stone beneath me, and my body willed itself to try and crawl away, despite the pain.

Suddenly, the beating of my heart was drowned out with another sound:

His laughter.

Only this time, it was not a laugh of amusement.

I stopped moving, my muscles stopping all at once, and I turned onto my back again, and found him right above my body, and my throat stretched out, and tightened, and though I felt that no sound should be able to escape it, I managed to say, “please, don’t. I don’t want this.”

My head must have known something that I did not, in the moment, because I could not help but question what it is that I did not want. 

Was he going to kill me?

He began to crouch, slowly, with a menace laced in the color of his eyes, and when he finally settled into place on the floor, his hands landed on my lower thighs, right above the knee, and he began to squeeze.

I could not help the strange, strangled cry that seeped from my throat, as Vere’s long, sharp nails embedded themselves into my legs, and then, slowly, while the man looked right into my eyes, he spread them apart.

My whole body seemed to lock together, my muscles refusing to move, and I stared. I couldn’t think. Somehow, I knew what was going to happen.

“You wouldn’t,” I said, frantically, my eyes darting over Vere’s face, and I began to shake my head.

No, no it wasn’t possible. Vere, Vere was a good man. Today, the alleyway, it had been- a fever dream, or a fear from my own head, a scenario I feared, it had not happened. It had not happened, and this was not happening because Vere was a good man and he would not do that. Not that. Not this.

I hadn’t even noticed that the man looking at me had stopped his movements, too lost in my own thoughts, and my own fears, and when finally I did realize this, I made eye contact with him, and he let his devil’s smile grow, his lips tightening from the stretch.

He had been waiting for me to look at him.

Why?

When I began to look up, lost in thought again, he moved one of his hands, and used it to force my head down, so that I had no choice other than to stare into him.

He had wanted me to see him do whatever it was that he was about to do.

And then, I knew, he would do it. 

I had been blind to it.

I shook my head in fear, quickly, sporadically, “No, no, you can’t. I love you, I love you, you can’t!”

I had not even thought to move my leg, the one not bound by his hand anymore. I had not even thought to use my arms, left free from his reach, to do a single thing. 

I was so lost in the terror of a possibility that I forgot to take the measures to prevent it.

Then, he stood up.

“Come to me, doll. You look so pretty, splayed out like that, but I am not in the mood for a struggle.”

I had never been spoken to like that before. I did not know how to respond, or even how to process what had just been said.

I knew so little, still, of how the world worked, or anything at all. All I knew was never to question men older than me, never to make a noise when I moved, to keep my head down, and…

Well. As my mother always used to tell me, the only way to survive when you have no choices to make, is to keep quiet, and to keep still, and to wait for it to be over.

I had loved my mother so much. She was to me, in all the shame of it, the guiding angel, and I was at war with myself, suddenly.

The part of me which made the majority, the part that was still that young child, the part that was always, always at a loss for words, told me to listen to my mother. Keep quiet, keep still… Wait for it to be over.

But, something, something so far down, buried inside, and closed away, was thrashing against its prison, and trying to scream at me to fight, to get away.

NO!

I was not a child! I was a man! A human! And in me I held a light, and I would not let it be snuffed out by some, some, perverted, salacious, horse shit child-lover.

I refused to be anyone’s doll.

I let out a cry of rage, and I brought my leg up and pounded my heel into his shin, and struggled to stand up, my limbs frenzied, and my mind lost in a web.

I looked around frantically, all around me. 

It was dark. Everything around me was black, and I knew that it hadn’t been like that before, and suddenly the blackness around me began to throb and to pulsate, teasing at me, and showing me wisps of the light and color that I had seen before, and my heart exploded into itself over and over again.

I was still looking around, but this time only side to side. 

In all of my panic over the loss of light, I had forgotten about what was happening.

I felt a cold arm wrap around my waist, taking my arms with it, and a chilling nose which came to the nape of my neck, and took a long inhale, just barely above the skin. 

I tensed. The nose moved away suddenly, and for a second, I allowed myself to relax slightly.

I felt a sharp, yet slight, sting on my back, near the neck, where the thin fabric of the shirt I was wearing started, and slowly, the sting ran down my spine, until it reached the bottom of my shirt, and left me.

A nimble hand peeled away the torn fabric, exposing my back to the air of the room, and a hungry stare,

My back arched as it tried to escape the slimy tongue that ran up the line of my spine.

The hand of his which did not hold me still came up to my shoulder and clenched.

His terrible lips came down to a spot on the right side of my back, and they floated there, gently, and unmoving, for a few seconds, and foolishly I allowed myself to relax, just a bit.

I felt the bite like a stake through my flesh, and my eyes widened, my back aching as it arched even further, trying so hard to escape, to get away. 

It did not work.

He stole only a bit of blood from this spot, and I thought that perhaps, he was finished with that particular venture.

Just above it, another.

Another.

Another.

He bit every part of my back, no doubt littering it with puncture wounds.

I thought I might collapse, if I had to feel that terrible, terrible, feeling, of those teeth sliding down through the skin, tearing it apart, each layer. 

I did not have to find out, though, if I would.

The mouth came off of the skin, and I could not feel its presence show up anywhere.

I was relieved.

I had been quiet and still, and it had been over so quickly. 

I felt the tension release from all of my muscles, my back straightening itself out, in anticipation of the arm holding me together to finally depart.

A light whisper, like a small drop of water exiting a crack from a ceiling, and growing slowly in size, and coming down upon your head and forcing you to think about nothing but the sudden and encompassing feeling of wetness upon your head.

“You’ve been trained so well.”

A pair of lips touched my neck, lightly pushing themselves onto the skin, barely allowing me to feel the way they moved as they continued, “I hate it when they speak. It disturbs the music.”

Then, his arm left my body.

A silence, a brief moment of stillness. My body was breathing in and out with a mechanical evenness, each movement of air in and out lasting the same amount of time. I couldn’t feel myself taking any of it in, but I felt the vague filling and emptying of my lungs.

I felt my body be picked up, and in an instant I was smashed into a wall. I experienced the sensation of my throat squeezing as I released a sound of anguish, but I could not see anything but blackness again.

I heard footsteps, slow, even, painfully, terribly slow, and I was thrown again.

The crash was harder this time. 

This pain didn’t feel real. Like I was experiencing it through the lens of someone who was incapable of feeling the torture of a mortal man. But, it was encasing me quickly, and each of my muscles ached.

I tried to get up, but my legs and arms were trembling with such an uncontrollable vigour, and when I finally managed to get on my feet, I felt those same muscles tearing apart, and this time, my sound of pain was closer to a shriek.

“Can’t you hear it? The music!”

His voice was too loud, so loud, so loud, and it came from everywhere around me at once, and I put my head in my hands and began to shake it back and forth.

His laugh was terrible, terrible, and I…

“This is the music of our time! And what a time it is! Truly, for us to be so lucky.”

I was picked up again, and I felt suddenly a terrible cold over my legs. No. No. He had taken from me my last line of defense. 

My calves felt as though they were a block of ice, and when my thighs began to freeze too, I could feel sickness crawling into my stomach.

I hated the cold.

I hated the cold.

I hate the cold.

I began to scream, as a single terrible shot of pain tore my body apart. I was being cut in half, split in two.

I knew what had happened.

It left, and then, it came again. It was worse. It was worse. I needed it to go away. I needed it gone.

I felt that I was no longer in a body, and instead some fog of consciousness creating for itself a false reality. Playing with dolls.

Yet, despite this, I knew I was in there somewhere. I may have had no sight of myself, or indeed any sight at all, but this is my territory. This is my land. I will not be taken down.

I willed myself to move. I focused on it. All my thoughts were of finding some autonomy of myself.

The pain surged again.

And again.

And again, and again, and again. 

I could feel nothing but the destroying of my body. My body. The only thing there was which I could truly call my own, which I could truly call good. If I was not good, it did not matter. I held this thing which was good, which was pure, and it was my only possession. 

Nothing but the destroying of my own body. The ripping apart. The shredding. The killing of my own body.

And, I knew I must have been crying.

I held no power anymore.

And, my body was not my own. Not anymore.

I was so cold.

At some point, it had all finished. I felt nothing. Then, I could see again. I was thrown into the middle of the room. My thighs were shaking, and they gave out from beneath me, and I came crashing down onto the tough stone floor.

It was happening again. All of it. Would it be the same?

I learned, no. Never the same.

This eternity was the existence my mind was suspended in. I felt that perhaps, I had died, and the man who here tortured me, appearing as Vere, was merely a minion of Hell, torturing me the way it knew would hurt the most.

I wished I wasn’t dead. I wished for this because I craved death as an escape from this. I hated it. I couldn’t… 

I hate the cold.

At some point, I became familiar with the touches and the pain. That made it hurt no less, in fact. Only more.

I felt a knife twist through my gut. I felt myself scream. I had done so much screaming.

I prayed for my voice to give out, so I would have to listen to my own screams no longer.

A strange touch.

Gentle.

Not in the mocking, lording way it had been every so often when my tormentor wished to degrade me in a personal way.

A caring touch.

Warm, very warm.

I felt as though I had not experienced warmth in so long. 

Another.

Two hands, maybe. Two hands touching me lovingly. 

Yet, they moved so fast.

It was hard to focus on the warmth, as I felt the strike of a whip upon my back, and my entire body thrashing in agony, and my own shrieking, but I tried.

And the more I tried, the deeper the wounds left by the whip. 

There was a mumble from somewhere. It sounded like I was swimming in a lake and someone above the surface was speaking.

Perhaps I was swimming up, closer to freedom from the surrounding water, because the mumble grew in volume, morphing itself into a whisper of sorts.

‘I wish I could hear you,’ I found myself thinking, ‘I wish I could understand what you were trying to say.’

Another strike.

I felt distinctly, for the first time in a while, the way that my body was trembling.

‘I wish I could feel the warmth of your hands again.’

But, it did not matter. I was tired of wishing.

The touch came to me again. The warmth. A vague, blurry sense of it.

I felt it on the back of my head, on the upper part of my right arm, and strangely, two wide streaks of it on my back.

When the whip came down again, it did not make the caress of the heat go away. 

The touch I could feel started to become more real, like I could actually experience the sensations it promised me, if only a bit, and it began to blur out the screaming pain my reality had become consumed with.

A light squeezing on my arm.

A small pulling on my hair. A tender sort of, stroking?

I didn’t know what was happening. I thought for a second I had imagined this, to give me some sort of comfort.

There was a strong sensation of wetness on my cheek, until so suddenly, it was gone.

“A tear?”

My voice? Was that my voice? It sounded so strange, but I knew it was mine.

I began to surge with glee. I hadn’t had control over my voice in such a long time.

“Aley?”

What?

Who was saying my name? 

If I could speak, I must be able to do other things, right?

I wanted to open my eyes. I wanted to be able to see things. Even locked in this cycle of Hell I had not been able to see. Let me see the face of the person who spoke to me now.

The light began to seep into my vision, and I wanted to laugh from the sheer delight I was feeling. I couldn’t, but oh, oh if only!

How sweet to be thrust into the light! How sweet to be blind your entire life and then to be gifted sight.

The first picture which came to me was coloured a bright, and shining auburn.

I felt my lips tighten, and turn up slowly into a thin smile. “Just like his hair,” I whispered, and tried to reach up and feel this thing.

There was a noise, though I could not say for sure if I had heard it as I was meant to, that reminded me vaguely of a choked sob.

My vision was clearing slowly, frustratingly slowly. I was so ready to come back into the reality of the world.

That is, if that was where I was.

It did not matter to me so much if this was death finally, or if it was life. All that mattered was that I could see what that lovely auburn thing was.

I clenched my eyes shut, as tightly together as I could, then opened them, and blinked a few times. 

I felt something wet on my cheek again, but this time, I saw the shape of something come up to my face, and dab gently at the wetness, wiping it a bit, until I could not feel it anymore. 

I watched the object retreat.

I looked up again.

It wasn’t until I began to see the two patches of green, encased in a light cream, that I realized what the warmth was.

I blinked rapidly again.

It felt like whatever had been cast upon me had lifted its weight. I could not see clearly quite yet, but lips slowly came to me, a light shift in colour from the warm cream.

“Oh,” I began to say, my throat feeling sandy, rough, and my voice, small and hoarse, “there you are.”

The hand that had been stroking my hair stopped in its place, and I heard the sound again, louder this time, a choked sob, and the green eyes seemed to be shaking, and I heard him say, “Here I am.”

I felt him pull me up close to him, and he enveloped me in his arms. He was hugging me. 

A tear rolled out from the edge of my eye.

It was so warm. 

His arms came tighter over me, and his head, from where it was over my shoulder tilted downwards just a bit, his body shaking, “Here I am.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“It’s time to go home, Aley.”

I was crying, harder now than before, but it did not matter to me. I could cry, with him. 

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

I didn’t know when he had grabbed me, or picked me up. I wasn’t quite aware of anything until the time I noticed he was carrying me.

“Where are we going?”

“To your home. You need to be taken care of.”

I began to shake my head, quickly, frantically.

“You can’t. That is not my home. I can’t go there. You can’t take me there.”

He was silent, and looked down to me, into my eyes.

I reached my hand up and grasped at his shirt, my fingers lightly expanding and detracting over the fabric a few times, and my head shook harder, “Please, please do not take me there.”

“...I won’t.”

My hand dropped down.

With no need to focus on the physical, I let myself be carried, and moved into the realm of thoughts.

It had been so difficult to think clearly locked in my visions of slumber. 

It, still, was hard to think. My head was drowning, a sea of water being sucked down at one middle point and redistributed out from the bottom.

Whatever rush of clearness had come upon me was gone too soon, and I felt the pressure rush back over my head.

My heart was racing. The thundering beat of the drum to which I marched became painful, painful and fast.

I guess, then, that I really must be a child. The small child that gets torn away by the roaring river, who has to be saved from the jagged rocks they’re heading towards by the big, strong man jumping in to save them.

Only a child, a small little, dumb and defenseless child, could have offered himself so fully to his own destruction.

I was a child, but I loved Vere. Whatever I thought had happened hadn’t happened. I was walking with Vere, I must have simply been pulled aside by some mugger, in a quiet, vigorous motion, and in the panic of the situation, imagined it.

I imagined it, I saw it wrong, a fever dream, a… 

Oh, damn it all! Damn all of it to the deepest pits of the imperial Hell! I’d tear my hair out, grind my teeth and pound a dip into the dirt beneath my feet if I could.

I was angry beyond any belief!

I couldn’t quite place what it was that I was angry at, I couldn’t name any of the damnable things which I would tear into shreds if I could get my hands on them at that moment.

But really, I realized after a short second, I was the only one here who was at any fault.

Yes, it was no one but me the whole time. The whole of my life, and the whole of the way in which I affected other people, everything had been cone by my own hand.

My mother, when she had left, had told me that it was because of the way that I was. My father knew it was me as soon as I told him of her departure.

And now, had I not lured this man to me, like a temptress of sin bringing the priest to evil? Had I not kept him to me for these years with a false sense of who I was?

Then, perhaps, this rage which had caused him to do what he had done was justified. To find out you had been lied to for more a’ year, heartbreaking.

My body felt so heavy, and suddenly I was struck with a terrible guilt at forcing Prospero to carry me. Surely, if only I pushed my cold body, I would find that this searing emptiness could be overcomed rather easily.

I was put down upon something.

Were we already there? I had assumed the walk would be longer. Maybe it was. I had been struggling with time in itself for a while. Perhaps we had already been walking for hours.

His hand came close to my face, looming over the skin an inch or so, his face beginning to tighten with some kind of emotion I couldn’t read. I wasn’t good at that sort of thing.

“You’re pale. More so than…” he pause for a second, and looked away from my eyes and somewhere off to the side.

“Usual.”

He looks back to me, and this time, he places his hand on my forehead.

I can feel his fingers lightly kneading my flesh, relaxing me and setting me over the edge at the same time.

I was at a war with myself, part of me screaming that I didn’t want any hands on my body, and the other part telling me that this man was to me a saviour, a bright streaming light, and that I wanted nothing but his warmth.

I must have been mad! I had to remind myself that no matter what had happened or hadn’t happened, I had met this man only once before. 

“Your skin is so cold. Taut. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

My eyes followed his mouth, and the way that his lips moved. It was so strange. They seemed to make little repeating patterns, little circles which grew and shrunk but always kept their shape.

His hand moved away from me, but his gaze remained focused.

“Though, I can’t seem to place exactly how.”

I tried to sit up, but his eyes bore into my skull, and he placed his hand on my chest, though did not push, and kept me still, bidding me back down.

“Neck.”

I watched his eyebrows furrow, and his eyes flicked to the side of my neck that was facing him. Then, he brought his head over my body, and shifted my head slightly so he had full view of the other side.

“There aren’t any wounds on your neck.”

I didn’t respond. I felt my eyes tinge from the sudden and overdone widening, and quickly I shut them so it would go away.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I was struck with a question, perhaps out of nowhere, or perhaps lingering in silence and waiting simply to emerge.

“How…” I was cut off by the arisal of a searing pain through my organs, a burning sort of sensation that crawled throughout me in slinking waves and lines, coiled up and spread out.

I felt myself hiss, and I wanted to turn on my side, to curl up, but the effort it would take to do such a thing felt an impossible feat.

HIs eyes were so soft, the way that they gazed. I felt like I could not look at anything else, or the pain might become magnified a million times over.

He seemed, though, to understand what I was going to say, or felt it on some level inside of him, or maybe he had been proficient in mind-reading (the thought amused me.), because he responded to my question.

“I came to your house, like I said I would. I was a bit hesitant when it took awhile for the door to open, but I knew something was wrong when your father opened the door, his face bright red, and tears streaming out of his eyes.”

He was putting a certain dramatic tone to his words, making it seem more fun, intriguing perhaps. I was sure he did this for my sake, perhaps to soothe me, perhaps to keep me present, to stop me from drifting into thought.

Or, maybe that was just how he recounted things, regardless of what they were. Maybe he was just a storyteller at heart. A performer. 

I don’t think that was it though. There was too much detail. He was doing it for my sake.

I hadn’t quite noticed when, but I saw that his mouth had pressed tightly together, and he was looking somewhere downwards and in front of him.

“He was rambling about how it was his fault, that he threw you into the arms of the beast, the clutches of the devil.”

I could feel my heart beating in my ears.

“I asked him what he meant. What exactly  _ was _ his fault. He told me about the manner of beast which he had dealt with.

“He told me you hadn’t come home the night before. That, it was a common thing. That every single night which you did not return, he feared you had finally been killed.

“He said that he feared you had really been destroyed, that his heart had been churning all night and that his gut had been coiling.

“He begged me to help him find you. I would have done it anyway, no matter what he had said.

“I was so lucky that you were so close. Even still, it took me hours. I…”

He paused, and I saw him swallow, looking as though such an action pained him.

“When I found you, I thought you were dead. I felt so foolish to sit there and be so torn over someone who I had barely spoken to.”

I saw something wet stream down his smooth, quivering cheek.

“I- I got so scared. My heart seized and- the way you looked-”

I slid my hand as close to him as I could without moving my torso, and he looked to it.

He did not take it, and instead looked into my eyes, and swallowed roughly again, and said, “You need to eat.”

He glanced away, and his hand came up to the bottom of a section of hair which had fallen above his shoulder, and he grasped the ends of it with two fingers, and said, vacantly, “I don’t know what would be best. You’ll need medicine, herbs.”

His hand dropped forward, in some elegant sort of way reminiscent of an acrobat flipping through the air, and he looked back to me, with a strange sort of hesitance.

“I’m so afraid to do this wrong. I don’t know how to help you, but- but I want to. I don’t want to risk your life.”

I wanted to tell him that none of it would be his fault. I wanted to hold his hand and rub his shoulders and hold him tightly and say no one would blame him for anything.

What did he mean I didn’t have any wounds on my neck?

He stood up, and moved away, but I did not watch him any longer. Suddenly, I wasn’t invested in him.

In fact, I felt a bout of laughter rise in my stomach. It shoved itself out of my throat at a rapid pace, and then, there was my voice, laughing.

I don’t like that sound.

My mouth curled up, and my entire body was shaking with the exclamations. No wounds on my neck! 

It was easy to ignore the silent shrieks of pain ripping through my muscles, my insides, for those moments. I wasn’t myself.

And then, I wasn’t laughing anymore. When is this part of the story over?

I was still.

I heard a door open and close, and the face of the discarded death appeared above me, slowly coming in closer, then stopping, and asking, “Can you open your mouth for me?”

I felt myself flinch.

His face softened for a second, and withdrew just a bit, and said, in a gentle, careful tone, a tender edge, “Amnetta gave me this tonic for you to take. She told me you had lost much blood, and that this would help. You can have it a bit later if you are not ready.”

I shook my head, and rather than voice that I wanted it, I simply pulled my head off of the surface it was on, heaving up by the neck, and parting my lips.

Soundlessly, he opened a bottle he had in his hand, brought one of his palms behind my skull, keeping it still, but not gripping it, rather a floating support beam, and he tilted the opening into my mouth.

I had expected it to be bitter, disgusting, and it was. There was a metallic tinge to it, that rang through the back of my throat, but I paid it no mind. Let it be there.

It was tough to swallow, something trying to force it out of my mouth, a gag, but I managed it.

“Rest again, you must. Allow your body to begin regenerating itself. When you wake, I’ll have something for you to eat.”

Sleep. Lord. I had been doing nothing but sleeping my entire life. Wasn’t that it? When do we wake? I wanted to wake. That seemed to be the answer to existence. Waking. If there was a Lord, let him rouse me.

Perhaps it was something I could only do myself. There was a secret to it, then. To wake. 

Maybe the answer is not to be woken, but rather to do it yourself.

I nodded. I would sleep. Let my body sleep so that my mind may find truth in a higher form of thinking.

However, that was not the end of it.

My entire body was gripped violently by terror, and I shot up, sitting up finally, and I reached out desperately to Prospero’s shirt.

I clutched at the fabric there, my hands shaking aggressively, to the point it began to hurt the muscles in my arms and wrists, and I looked into his eyes, which were widened in surprise, and I shoved words out of myself.

“Do not let him in. If he comes here, do not let him in. Do not let him see me. Do not let him near here.”

He looked down to my hands, then back to me, and he asked, “Who is he? Who are you talking about?”

The unasked question which I knew was ghosting his lips, rumbling on his tongue, begging to be let out, which I knew he would not ask, but that was plaguing him, simply because it was plaguing me too, ‘How would he even know you were here?’

My voice lowered to a whisper, and my words began to morph together as they exited me, “I dare not speak his name. Do not let him in. Do not let him see me.”

I released his shirt, and I fell back again, to lay down. One tear, lone and muddy, came out of my right eye, before both of them were closed.

“Do not let him find me. It will be my end.”

I wished all of a sudden, that I had not said or done any of those things which I had just done. What if I had upset him? What if I was being petulant? Anyone would be frustrated with me.

It appeared to me suddenly that to sleep would be cowardly. What, such a sissy that I have to escape consciousness just to avoid the shame of upsetting someone?

Lord.

I’d be torn apart by my own mind if I continued on like this. If to take care of my own body is to be a coward then call me a coward.

If I had frustrated Prospero, I would sort things out soon. 

All that mattered then, I realized, was that I pulled myself out of my own head. At war in the vast doming fire of your own brain. Damned be the parts of me that called me whiny, needy, a pest. Damned be them and damned be the hatred I held for myself.

For the first time, I was faced with the truth of my own existence.

If I did not love myself, who was going to do it? If I did not love myself, and instead clung onto any sort of love I received from others, this would happen again. Because, that was the truth of it, wasn’t it.

I was desperate for something to the point of self-destruction. A starving mouse walking away from the pantry behind him and moving toward the bit of cheese upon the shining trap.

I made a decision then, that no matter how long it would take me, I would not be this person. 

There was me somewhere. There was Aley out in the vast woods somewhere. 

Let me then, go into that forest, and brave the terrible darkness which will find me, the glowing eyes of beasts may find me, and the glistening fangs of death will stare me down, but somewhere out in the woods, there was Aley.

I fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologize for taking so long to update, things have been busy with school, and art, I've been working on a major project with regards to my future in art. Also- not to be that person that's like, "Wow, my writing is perfect, bow down to me," but I have some things I really like about this chapter that I want to talk about. If you're interested in writing, maybe these can help you in the future! I'll paraphrase, limited space.  
> The way Aley interacts with Prospero here just works. This is like, five seconds after this guy finds out he's been groomed for several years, that the person he had been manipulated into loving was a monster and also escaped a hellhole inside of his own mind where these specific feelings were weaponized against him, and his entire narrative is clouded with that??? Incapable of seeing a kind gesture in any way other than the terrible disturbed way he's learnt to see them? It hits. If you ever need to write a similar situation, some tips. Focus specifically on the movement's and actions of on person, and leave out the narrator's own feelings and emotions, because it shows the narrator has been taught to ignore their own boundaries and inhibitions and think only of the way their actions would make others feel. It also does make the scene feel a bit strange, a bit lopsided, or uncomfortable, because of the way it erases the expected thought processes or cautions or even noticing one's own actions. You have to detach the other character that you're focusing on from any emotions their actions should be driven y. Like, when Prospero began to cry, instead of focusing on that, Aley comments on how his cheek appears. Aley doesn't acknowledge almost anything happening in the scenes with Prospero, at least not in the regard I explained. One thing I'm particularly proud of is that after searching for the best possible metaphor to use here and really drive that point home, I got it- The flipping acrobat. It's just such a drive away from what's happening it almost disorients the reader in a way. Maybe that's not the word but, the point is that it does its job. Another thing, another example of all that I've outlined, right afterwards, Aley starts to think about all the things he should be doing to help Prospero, even though Aley is the one that just went through a near-death experience, that hit too. The magic of writing.


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